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THE NEGRO 
-IN AMERICAN LIFE 





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INGE 
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THE NEGRO aah 


Y, eS 
<2 ogicaL SENS 


IN AMERICAN LIF 





BY 


JEROME DOWD, M.A. 


PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
AUTHOR OF “THE NEGRO RACES (IN AFRICA),” 
“DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA,” ETC., ETC. 





PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO. 
NEW YORK LONDON 





Copyright, 1926, by 


Tue Century Co. 


Printed in U. S. A. 


PREFACE 


The question of race relationships is one of the greatest of social 
questions. Throughout history there have been no influences more 
determinative of the character and direction of human societies than 
those of racial contact and conflict, of racial fusion, and of interchange 
of racial cultures. Not only the greatest exaltations, but also the great- 
est downward plunges of human societies, have come from racial con- 
tacts. 

The amazing fact is the almost universal ignorance prevailing among 
the American people in reference to this matter of race relationships. 
In a few of our universities one may observe very small groups pursuing 
courses in anthropology, and therein acquiring some fundamental facts 
in regard to race relations, but the mass of students who pass through 
our institutions learn scarcely anything of this important subject. Gen- 
erally they emerge from our institutions, as they entered them, with 
much race misinformation and race prejudice. Moreover, strange to 
say, our institutions of learning contain much more of information about 
the character and different breeds of cattle, swine, and poultry than of 
human beings. In our sociological literature and teachings we unwit- 
tingly cultivate a prejudice against all alien races by vivid pictures of 
the poverty, vice and crime which these races often exhibit, under slum 
conditions, and we do not take the trouble to inform the student what 
these races have done, and are doing, for the enrichment of our culture. 

In knowledge of the races of the world, and of the problems of racial 
contact, it is doubtful if Americans have made any progress in the past 
century. At any rate, we blunder along with the heterogeneous races 
under our flag, and are least prepared of any civilized people to play a 
leading role in the matter of international relationships. The ardor of 
American patriotism has had a tendency to impress our people with the 
idea of the inferiority of other races than that to which we claim kinship, 
and, if our attitude toward them has not been that of contempt, it 
certainly has not been that of admiration or enlightened sympathy. 

The first step in the direction of good will and codperation among 
the races of the world is that they come to know each other. In the 


high schools and universities of our country there should be courses 
v 


vi PREFACE 

offered dealing with the culture and contributions to civilization of the 
several great races of the world, especially of the races living under our 
flag. The study of races and race cultures is one of the most broadening 
and elevating branches of human inquiry, if we are able to lay aside 
prejudices and seek in each race its genius and its service in the forward 
march of civilization. 

It seems to me that in the study of race relations the American people 
should begin with the American Negro; first, because of his numerical 
importance, and second, because he offers a greater contrast than any 
other race to the Caucasians who founded our government. 

The Negro problem is typical of all other race problems. The same 
fundamental principles, which apply to the contact of the Negro and the 
Caucasian, apply to all problems of racial contact; so that we should 
endeavor to discover what these principles are and to make them the 
basis of our relations with all the races of mankind. 

JEROME Down. 
Norman, Oklahoma. 


CONTENTS 


Part One 


RESUME OF THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF 
THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


CHAPTER 
I BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA . 


Native Races and Culture of Africa—The Slave Trade and 
the Transplanting of the Negro into the New World— 
History of Negro Slavery in Central and South America, 
and in the Colonies of North America—Economic and 
Climatic Factors Influencing the Distribution of Slavery in 
the United States—Service of the Negro to the North and 
South in the Civil War—The Beginning of Negro Edu- 
cation in the Southern States 


Part Two 


THE NEGRO IN THE NORTHERN STATES SINCE 
THE, CIVIL WAR 


2 Economic STATUS OF THE NORTHERN NEGROES . 


Opportunities in the Skilled and Unskilled Trades—In Do- 
mestic Service—Enlarging Field for Negro Labor in the 
Big Industries—Relation of the Negro to Union Labor— 
Negroes in the Mercantile Business and in the Professions 


3. DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YorK 


The Housing Problem—Negro Quarters in New vee 
Harlem, the Great Negro Capital—Social Activities and 
Social Stratification—Human Nature As Seen at the Bot- 
tom and at the Top 


4 DoMEsTIC AND SocIAL LIFE IN CHICAGO . 


The Black Belt of Chicago—Character of the ee: 
Opposition to Selling or Renting Houses to Negroes in 
White Districts—Methods Employed to Keep the Negroes 
Out—Claim That Negro Invasions Depreciate Property— 
Negro Quarters in Philadelphia and Other Cities 


Vii 


PAGE 


17 


24 


31 


Vili CONTENTS 





CHAPTER PAGE 
§ RACIAL SEPARATION . 39 
Negro Churches, Clubs, petatnet one iptotels: Thea- 
ters, Dance Halls, and So Forth—Refusal or Discourage- 
ment of Negro Patronage by Public Resorts and Private 
Businesses Primarily for Whites—Avoidance of Embar- 
rassment through Exercise of Good Sense by Both Races 


6 Tue Necro Asa CITIZEN .. 46 


His Part in Politics—Bad jAduedee se the esas Vote in 
Some Cities—Share of the Negro in the Spoils of Office 


7 CRIMINALITY OF THE NEGRO IN THE NoRTH. . . « «© 49 
Reason for Greater Criminality in the North Than in the 
South—Reason for Greatest Criminality in the West—Rea- 
son for Existence of Great Crime Center in Chicago—Para- 
mount Importance of Bad Environment As a Cause of 
Negro Crime 


8 Fricrion BETWEEN THE RACES. . . rays - Oboe 
Frequent Occurrence of Clashes and Riots nee to Re 
Friction—The Springfield Riot of 1908—The Waukegan 
Riot of 1917—The St. Louis Riots of 1917—The Chicago 
Riot of 1919 


g EpucaTIonAL Status OF NoRTHERN NEGROES . . 66 


Problems of Avoiding Race Friction in the Hienenmees 
Schools—Social Separation of the Races in the High 
Schools—Lack of Elementary Education Adapted to the 
Negro’s Needs—Negroes in Northern and Western Uni- 


versities 
~ 
ii 10\ Reticious Aspects oF NoRTHERN NEGROES. . . 72 
i \ | 
\\/ The Northern Negro Preacher in Politics—Negro Chimie 


and Negro Membership in White Churches—Tribulations 
of the Negro Pastor—Character of Negro Preachers— 
Example of a Heroic Ministry 


Part Three 


THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTHERN STATES SINCE 
DPHEsCTVika WAR 


Ir Tse Necro in Economic Lire. . . . Pate. 


Negro Landowners, Tenants, and Wage Workers in the 
Field of Agriculture—Description of Rural Negro Homes 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


I2 


13 


14 


T5 


16 


17 


18 


—Decline in Number of Negroes in Domestic Service— 
Increasing Opportunities for the Negro in Manufacturing 
and Mechanical Industries 


DoMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEGRO 


Negro Quarters in Cities—Looseness of Family Ties— 
Handicap of Negro Mothers in Having to Work Away 
from Home and Support the Family—Short Period of In- 
fancy—Progress in the Development of Chastity in Spite 
of Adverse Conditions—Rich and Varied Social Life 


Tue NEGRO AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 


Strength of the Negro Vote and Possibilities ot meas 
Domination —F ranchise Laws Limiting the Negro Vote— 
Reasons for the Grandfather Clause—Result of Removal 
of the Negro Menace in Bringing a Better Class of White 
Men into Politics 


REGULATION OF Non-POLITICAL RIGHTS . 


Separation of the Races on Railway Trains ae Bu Cel 
Cars—Impracticability of Street-car Separation in Large 
Cities—The Problem of the Sleeping Car—Negroes Have 
Their Own Hotels, Restaurants, Theaters, and So Forth 


THe NEGRO AS A VIOLATOR OF THE LAW . 


Greater Frequency of Negro Crime in the City Than j in ge 
Country—Greater Frequency of Crime Against the Person 
Than Against Property—Erroneous Notions as to the Ex- 
tent of Negro Theft and Rape—Paramount Importance 
of Bad Environment as a Factor in Negro Crime 


THE LYNCHING PRACTICE IN THE SOUTH . ; 
Its Origin and Present T’endency—The Kinds if ce 
Which Provoke Lynchings—Decline in Cases of Rape and 
in Number of Lynchings—Effort to Repress Lynchings by 
Educating Public Sentiment and by Raising the Cultural 
Status of Both Races 


OTHER OUTRAGES UPON NEGROES . 


Assaults on Negroes by White Mots sbetiriciin of Bioh: 
etty—Expulsion from the Country—Influence of the Ku 
Klux—Race Riots 


THE PEONAGE OF NEGROES . 


Its Origin—Character and Extent of arene eee Which ae: 
courage Peonage—The Remedy—General Extent of Out- 





PAGE 


g6 


103 


IIo 


I15 


I2I 


128 


132 


x 


CONTENTS 





CHAPTER 


19 


20 


21 


22 


23 


24 


rages upon the Negro—What the White People Are Doing 
and Should Do to Give the Negro a Square Deal 


Tue Necro BEFORE SOUTHERN CourtTs . 


How the Negro Fares When He Commits Crime Pe 
the Whites and When the Whites Commit Crime against 
Him—White Friends of the Negro in Court—Frequent 
Renderings of Signal Justice to the Negro by White Juries 


THE NEGRO AS A CONVICT 


Various Systems of Employing a fo aeign ate 
or Contract System—The State Farm System—The Chain- 
gang—Advantages and Drawbacks of the Several Systems 
—Progress of the South in Solving the Problem of Convict 
Labor 


Pusiic SCHOOL EDUCATION . 


Negro Common Schools in the South—Percentage of 
Negro Children Enrolled—Progress in Diminishing Lllit- 
eracy—Increase in Length of the School Term—Higher 
Qualifications and Salaries for Teachers—Comparative 
Cost of Negro and White Schools—Development of High 
Schools, State Normals, and Local Training-schools— 
Movement for Model School-houses 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 


Institutions of Higher Learning and for Technical Instruc- 
tion Supported by the States and the Federal Government 
—lInstitutions of Higher Learning Supported by White Re- 
ligious Organizations—Endowments of White Philan- 
thropists to Aid Negro Education—Donations of the Ne- 
groes Themselves for the Education of Their Race 


INSTITUTIONS OF HiGHER LEARNING (CONT.) 


Institutions of Higher Learning Supported by the Negroes 
Themselves—Endowed and Variously Supported Profes- 
sional and Industrial Schools—The Work of Hampton and 
Tuskegee—Public Libraries for Negroes 


THE SITUATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION . 


General Estimate of Institutions of Higher Learning for 
Negroes—Too Many of Such Institutions—Few of Them 
Doing Work of College Grade—Many of Them Badly Lo- 
cated—Need of Elimination and Cooperation in the Inter- 
ests of Efficiency 


PAGE 


137 


143 


149 


162 


176 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


25 


26 


27 


28 


29 


30 


st! 


RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO . 


Church Affiliations—Emotional Outbursts at Revival Meet- 
ings—Character of Negro Preachers—Their Former Ten- 
dency to Become Leaders in Politics—Social Aspects of the 
Negro Church—Great Value of Religion for the Colored 
People 


Part Four 
THE NEGRO IN THE WORLD WAR 


TRAINING CAMPS AND RACE TROUBLES 


First Employment of Negro Troops—Negro a 
in the Training Camps—Race Troubles in Texas, South 
Carolina, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Elsewhere 


SERVICE OF A'MERICAN TROOPS AS A WHOLE . 


Service of the American Troops in Stopping the German 
Drive in 1918, and in Forcing the Germans Back—The St. 
Mihiel Offensive and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive 


SERVICE OF THE 309TH INFANTRY . 


Employment in Building Terminals at St. Nazaire, Jan- 
uary, 1918—Experience of the Third Battalion in Guarding 
German Prisoners in Brittany—The Taking Over of a 
Section in the Champagne District—Transference to the 
Line below Minancourt in June—The Last German Drive, 
July 15—Participation in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive 
of September 26 


SERVICE OF THE 370TH INFANTRY . 


Occupation of a St. Mihiel Sector June 21—Transference 
to Argonne Forest July 4—To the Soissons Sector in 
August—And to the Oise-Aisne Canal in September—Par- 
ticipation in the Allied Offensive of September and October 
Which Drove the Germans across the Belgian Border 


SERVICE OF THE 371ST REGIMENT erro 
Activities Near Verdun—In the Meuse-Argonne Drive— 
Spotlessness of Record 


SERVICE OF THE 372ND REGIMENT . 


Occupation of Line in Argonne Forest—Trouble with 
Colored Officers—Discharge or Transference of Many Col- 


xi 


PAGO 


178 


193 


199 


205 


208 


215 


isi CONTENTS 





CHAPTER 


ored Officers—Occupation of Line in the Champagne Sec- 
tor—Good Account of Themselves Given in the September 
26th Offensive 


32 SERVICE OF THE 92ND DIVISION . 


Taking Over of the St. Die Sector August 25—Trans- 
ference to the Argonne September 21—Two Flights from 
the Front—Court-martial of Leaders for Cowardice— 
Transference to the Marbache Sector October 5—FPartici- 
pation in the Final Allied Drive of November to and 11 


33 WortTH oF THE NEGRO TROOPS . 


Summary of the Services of the Colored Units—Recipients 
of the Croix de Guerre—Citations for Distinguished Serv- 
ice—General Bullard’s Criticisms of the 92nd Division— 
General Estimate of the Negro as a Soldier—Enlivening 
Effect of Negro Regimental Bands in the Camps—Intro- 
duction of the French People to Jazz Music 


Part Five 
NEGRO MIGRATION 


34 MIGRATION PREVIOUS TO IQI4 . 


Movement of the Negro During the Days of Slavery— 
Escape of Runaways to Free Soil—Attraction of Free Ne- 
groes to the West and to the Industrial Centers in the 
South—Trend of Negro Migration after the Civil War— 
Exodus to the West in 1879—Movement from the Farms 
to the Towns—Concurrent Migration of Negroes and 
Whites to the North and West 


35 Recent MIGRATION . 


Extent of Migration North and South—Northern-born 
Negroes More Migrant Than Southern-born—Southern 
Negro Migration between States—Excess of Volume of 
White Migration over That of Negro Migration—Causes 
Which Have Influenced the Migrants—Advantages and 
Disadvantages of the Migration to Both Races—Gains of 
the South in Both Negro and White Population 


222 


231 


245 


249 


CONTENTS 


Part Six 
THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE AND ART 


CHAPTER 


36 


37 


38 


39 


40 


41 


42 


WRITINGS oF NORTHERN WHITES . 


References to the Negro by Washington line ou James 
Fenimore Cooper—The Anti-slavery Poetry of Whittier, 
Lowell, and Whitman—Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s agate 
—Olmsted’s Journeys through the South—Sociological 
Studies of the Negro 


Mark Twain’s DELINEATION . 


Pudd’nhead Wilson, Dealing with the Tee of ies nie 
latto—Tom Sawyer Abroad—General Attitude of Mark 
Twain Toward the Negro 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES . 


Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus and ete fh oii 
Thomas Nelson Page, the Interpreter of the Virginia Slave 
—Dhialect Stories of Ambrose Gonzales—Novels of Tom 
Dixon—James Lane Allen—Other Authors Dealing with 
the Negro 


Necro Poets . 


Paul Laurence Dee ih cient Me ne Weldon 
Johnson—Means, Hawkins, Corrothers, and Fenton John- 
son—Recent Tendencies in Negro Poetry —The Tragedy 
of the Mulattoes Revealed in Poetry 


Necro NOVELISTS AND HISTORIANS . 


Novels of Chesnutt and Bane pee a se R 
Williams, Brawley, Scott, Grimké, and Others 


Tue NEGRO ON THE RACE PROBLEM 


Personality and Points of View of Booker r. W it ot 
W. E. B. DuBois, and James D. Corrothers—Discus- 
sions of the Problem by Thomas, Holtzclaw, Kelly Miller, 
and Others 


Necro FoLtk Soncs . 


Their African Busine Sciimials of the Southern Sa 
tions—Funeral Songs—Work Songs—Satirical and Hu- 
morous Songs—lInfluence of Negro Folk Songs on the 
Music of the Whites 


Xili 


PAGE 


263 


275 


283 


397 


325 


328 


335 


XIV CONTENTS 





CHAPTER PAGE 


43 Mopern Necro Music; Necro DANCES. . . . eee 


Negro Music Since the Civil War—Negro Composers and 
Vocal Artists—The Jubilee Singers—The Famous “Blind 
Tom” and Other Instrumentalists—Ragtime and Jazz— 
The African Dance and Its Modification in America— 
Blending of the Dance with Religious Exercises 


44 Necro DRAMA, PAINTING, AND SCULPTURE . . ; 345 


Ira Oldridge and Charles Gilpin As Te catice Cree GC), 
Tanner, E. W. Scott, and Albert Smith As Painters—Ed- 
monia Lewis and Meta Warrick As Sculptors 


45) DHE SN EGRO PRESS 304°.) 4 een ie OR i Ca a 


Representative Newspapers and Magazines—Contrast be- 
tween Northern and Southern Papers—Overemphasis of 
Negro’s Grievances by the Negro Press—Obligations of 
Both the Negro and the White Press to Bring About Better 
Race Relations 


Part Seven 
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM 


46 THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM. . . Fables Lote 


Approach from the Standpoint of Fito Biology, ree 
thropology, and Psychology—The Author’s Personal Ob- 
servations of the Negro in the United States—Definition 
of Race—The Problem of Harmonizing the Interests of 
Two Unlike Races in the Same Territory and under the 
Same Government 


47 A'MALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY . . Bite | Ate 


Argument That Races Are Equal—Standards for eset 
ing the Superiority of One Race over Another in Physical 
Appearance—Difference in Ideals of Aesthetic Values— 
Question of the Mental Equality of Races—Humanitarians 
and Men of Science Who Uphold the Doctrine of Race 
Equality 


48 A'MALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF INEQUALITY. . . Yt Re 
Authors Who Hold That Races Are Endowed with Un. 


equal Capacities — Darwin — Romanes—Galton—Tylor— 
Keane—Marett—Gobineau—Taine— Huntington — Dixon 
—Osborn—Angell—East—Grant—Wissler and Others 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 


49 WRriTERS ON NEGRO INFERIORITY 


Sitpich ele TS Gie eee THA eee oe Ny Lae Sereda Mca 
ler—Hart—Evans—Bryant and Others—Question of the 
Superiority of the Mulatto 


50 DIFFERENCE OF RACES 


Relation of the Size of the Brain to Intelligence—Infer- 
ences from the Smaller Brain of the Negro—Non-signifi- 
cance of Size of the Brain in Determining the Mental 
Capacity—Inferiority of the Negro As Shown by Psycho- 
logical Tests Applied to Negroes and Whites—Lack of 
Standard for Determining the Superiority of One Race 
over Another—The Indisputable Fact of Race Difference 


51 NEGRO-CAUCASIAN PHYSICAL CONTRASTS . 


Anatomy and Physiology of the Negro—Resistance to Dis- 
ease—Muscular Strength—Acuteness of the Senses—Wide 
Difference among the Negroes Themselves 


52 THe PsycHeE or THE NEGRO. 


Cheerfulness — Impulsiveness — Vanity — Improvidence 
Frankness—Truthfulness—Sympathetic Response—Emo- 
tionalism—Intolerance of Discipline—Restlessness—Irra- 
tional Thinking—Reminiscent Imagination—Feeble Inhib- 
iting Power, etcetera 


53 BroLocicAL Aspects OF AMALGAMATION . 


The Function of Crossing among Plants and Animals— 
Consequences of Crossing Near and Distantly Related 
Types—Importance as a Factor in Crossings of the Quality 
of the Characters Inhertted—Biological Considerations 
Weighing Against Amalgamation 


54 PsycHoLtocicaL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION . 


The Cause of Racial Affinities and in ti patieeMe NEPAL 
Impulses Which Develop Consciousness of Kind—Con- 
trol of Consciousness of Kind over the Social and Sexual 
Relations between Animal Groups—lllicit Sex Relations 
between Different Races—Operation of Psychological 
Laws to Prevent Too Intimate Inbreeding and Too Dis- 
tant Outbreeding 


55 SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 


Question of Importance of Amalgamation He a Factor in 
the Evolution of Culture—Light on the Question from 


XV 


PAGE 


381 


389 


397 


401 


AIO 


417 


Xvi 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 





History—Social Conditions Favorable to Cultural Ad- 
vanice 


56 SocrotocicaL Aspects (ConrT.) 


Dependence of the Value of Amalgamation upon rie Cul- 
ture Level of the Races Forming the Amalgam—The Effect 
of Contact of Races on Different Levels and on the Same 
Level of Culture—Beneficial Effects of Amalgamation of 
Races on High Levels of Culture and on Nearly the Same 
Levels 


57 EXTENT OF AMALGAMATION . 


Decline of Lawful Marriage Shown by Salita! on In- 
termarriage—l[*xcess of Number of Marriages between 
White Women and Negro Men over Number between Ne- 
gro Women and White Men—lInferior Character of the 
Whites and Blacks Who Intermarry—Marked Diminution 
of Illicit Intercourse between the Races 


58 OPpposiITION TO AMALGAMATION 


Sentiment of the Whites and Negroes against Amalgama- 
tion—KRepresentative Opinions of Men of Both Races— 
Unity of Spokesmen for the Negroes of the South Against 
Amalgamation—The Futility of Advocating Amalgama- 
tion As a Solution of the Race Problem 


59 COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 


Efforts to Colonize the Negro in Africa—Lincoln’s Plan 
of Colonizing the Negro in the West Indies—Archer’s Idea 
of Colonizing the Negro in Lower California—Views of 
Henry M. Stanley and Others on Colonization—The Mar- 
cus Garvey Scheme—Question of the Negro’s Aptitude for 
Colonization 


‘60 RAcE SEGREGATION AS A SOLUTION . 


61 A 


Natural Tendency of Races to Keep Au Nt hore gua 
gation in America—Opposition of the Negroes to Enforced 
Segregation—Advantages and Disadvantages of Segrega- 
tion—Views of James Bryce on the Subject 


FREE STATE IN THE BLAcK BELT 


Proposal to Create a Colored Free State out ig the eth, 
ern Black Belt—Possibility That Immigration of Dark 
Whites from Southern Europe or Mexico May Lead to a 
Hybrid Race Similar to That of Tropical South America 


PAGE 


430 


453 


458 


470 


481 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
—Supposition That the Political Power of This Hybrid 
Race Would Be Intolerable to the Northern and Western 
States, and Lead to the Erection of a Colored Free State 


_ 62 Civit EQUALITY AS A SOLUTION . 


Practical Difficulties of Enforcing Civil Equality is ina Na. 
tion of Racial Diversity—Failure to Enforce Civil Equal- 
ity in the South During the Reconstruction Period—Result 
of Effort to Eliminate Color Discrimination in the Fran- 
chise—Theory of John Stuart Mill That Only One Race 
Can Govern in One Territory—Theory of Charles Francis 
Adams That the Principle of Equality Applied to the 
Negro and Caucasian Works Only Chaos 


63 WHITE SUPREMACY AS A SOLUTION 


Unwillingness of the Caucasian to Divide Responsibility 
with Another Race in the Same Territory—The Cauca- 
sian’s Strong Sense of Consciousness of Kind and Strong 
Sense of Property Rights—Theory of Carlyle That the 
Right to Hold and Control Any Territory Belongs to the 
Race Best Fitted to Use It—Superior Claims of the Cauca- 
sian to Territory in America 


64. EDUCATION AS THE SOLUTION 


Argument That It Is Unjust to ee the ae if Edu- 
cating the Negro upon the South and That the National 
Government Should Help—Views of Ex-President Taft, 
Raymond Patterson, William H. H. Hart, and Others 


65 DIFFERENT Necro Pornts oF VIEW 


Interest in Social Equality and in Political Measures among 
Northern Negroes—Ideas of DuBois and Booker Wash- 
ington Contrasted—Denunciation of Roosevelt and Hard- 
ing by Northern Negroes for Their Remarks on the Race 
Proble 
Because of Their Radical Leadership 





Part Eight 
Ae PU REO E Be oo UN Ee GrRG) 


66 BIoLoGIcAL CHANCES OF SURVIVAL . 


Absence of a Solution of the Negro Problem in Social 
Science—Relinquishment of the Problem to the Biological 


XVil 


PAGE 


486 


493 


498 


502 


925 


XVIll CONTENTS 





Principle of the Survival of the Fittest—Probability of the 
Survival of the Negro from the Standpoint of History and 
Vital Statistics 


67 Economic CHANCES OF SURVIVAL . 


Probability of the Survival of the Negro from the Stand- 
point of His Economic Status—His Apparent Failure to 
Advance Up to 1895—Gloomy Predictions for His Fu- 
ture at That Time—Wonderful Strides After 1895 under 
the Leadership of Booker Washington—Rise of a Pros- 
perous Negro Middle Class—Problem of the Ability of the 
Negro to Keep Pace with the Ever-Increasing Specializa- 
tion and Intensification of Industry 


Part Nine 
PALHS*O RE ORE 


68 RAcIAL COOPERATION 


Grounds for an Encouraging Outlook—Lines of Endeavor 
Favoring Survival—Need of the Races for More Knowl- 
edge of Each Other and More Friendly Cooperation— 
Recent Efforts toward Inter-racial Understanding and Up- 
lift—Work of the Y. M. C. A., University Professors, the 
Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation and Other Organ- 
izations—Part Played in Uplift by Southern White Women 


69 ARACIAL Socraps ADJUSTMENT, “Siete ane tee 


Necessity for Effective Cooperation of Inter-racial Under- 
standing on the Social Question—Variations of the Color 
Line under Different Conditions of Race Contact—The 
Natural Tendency of Unlike Races to Live Apart—Con- 
trast Between the Northern and Southern Negroes on the 
Social Question—Tighter Drawing of the Color Line Re- 
sulting from Agitation against It—Hope of Mutual Under- 
standing on the Social Question and of Increasing Inter- 
racial Codperation 


70 SUGGESTED SPHERES OF Necro AcTIVITY . 


Propitiousness for the Survival of the Negro of Condi- 
tions Which Minimize Competition with the Whites—Ad- 
vantages of the Natural Tendency of the Negro to Keep 
Apart—Need of Training More Negroes for Skilled Labor 
and for Professional Careers—Need of Education Adapted 
to the Negro’s Cultural Status and Spheres of Activity 


PAGE 


532 


547 


566 


577 





CONTENTS 


Goop Homes, Less Poritics, More VISION . 


Paths of Hope in the Direction of Better Dwelling-houses 
and Better Protection of the Negro’s Home—The Suppres- 
sion of Mobs—-Less Concentration upon Politics—Better 
Understanding Between the North and South on the 
Political Question—Removal of Incentives for the White 
Demagogue—Golden Opportunities Now Beckoning to the 
Negro of Thrift 


72 FAITH IN ACHIEVEMENT. 


Paths of Hope in the Direction of Renae of the A 
gro’s Religion—The Development of His Natural Aesthetic 
Aptitudes—The Complexity and Multiplicity of the Dif- 
ficulties of the Negro Problem—Likelihood of Compensat- 
ing Advantages to Both Races If Each Faces the Problem 
with Soldierly Courage and Faith in Human Destiny 


List OF THE PRINCIPAL SOURCES USED IN THE PREPARA- 


TIONLOR THE: text. 


INDEX 


X1X 


PAGE 


581 


999 


593 


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PART ONE 


RESUME OF THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO 





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CHAP Like: 
BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA 


Native Races and Culture of Africa—The Slave Trade and the Transplanting of 
the Negro into the New World—History of Negro Slavery in Central and 
South America, and in the Colonies of North America—Economic and 
Climatic Factors Influencing the Distribution of Slavery in the United States 
—Service of the Negro to the North and South in the Civil War—The 
Beginning of Negro Education in the Southern States 


T is generally agreed,” says Ellsworth Huntington, “that early man 

originated somewhere in Asia. Formerly it was supposed that he 
came from the warm, tropical parts of the continent. Little by little 
this view has given place to the idea that man’s early home was in what 
are now the central deserts and plateaux, the vast region between Meso- 
potamia and the Caspian Sea on the west, and eastern Tibet and Mon- 
golia on the east. There is abundant evidence in archeology and history 
that the greatest of all human movements have been from the central 
parts of Asia outward. One great stream of migrants presumably 
went by devious routes southwest into Africa.” ? 

The Negro probably acquired his dark skin in the tropical regions 
of the Old World, where the intensity of the heat and glare made it nec- 
essary for him to protect himself by developing a thick pigmentation 
of the skin.? 

The Negro of the Old World is found in Africa, and in several tropi- 
cal and subtropical regions east of that continent. Starting from Africa 
and going eastward, in geographical order, we find small groups of 
Negro people in the following countries: Madagascar, the Andaman 
Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the Malay Peninsula, Luzon of the Phil- 
ippine Islands, and the Black Islands, the latter comprising a long string 
of islands stretching from New Guinea to Fiji. 

In Africa the various types of Negroes may be classified in five 
divisions, as follows: 

The Negritos, a pygmy people, found in small, scattered settlements 


*The Character of Races, p. 20. 
*Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. 2, Ch, XXIII, 


S 


4 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





in the equatorial forest, in the Kalahari Desert (Bushmen), and in Cape 
Colony (the Hottentots). 

The Nigritians, comprising the dwellers in the Sudan region cen- 
tering on the lower Niger River. This type is the most primitive, and 
is the darkest and most negroid in features. 

The Fellatah, a lighter and less negroid race, scattered over the west- 
ern Soudan who, prior to European intervention, ruled over the darker 
people of that region. 

The Bantu, comprising all of the Negroes of Africa south of the 
Soudan, excepting the Bushmen and Hottentots. This type is very dark 
and negroid where it joins the Nigritians on the west, but be- 
comes lighter and meliorated in features as it circles around to the east. 

The Galla, comprising the natives of the eastern mountains and pla- 
teaux. This type is of dark copper color, with often Egyptian or Cau- 
casian features, due to intermixture with the ancient Egyptian and 
Semitic races. 

The occupations of the Negroes in Africa are determined by the 
climate and distribution of animal and plant life. In a broad zone lying 
under the equator, there is an immense and almost impenetrable forest 
and jungle, and the people here live chiefly on the banana and the plan- 
tain, which grow wild and in great luxuriance. In this zone the people 
exercise very little foresight, since nature furnishes them with their 
daily needs throughout the year. 

In the broad zone lying north of the equatorial belt there is less 
rainfall, and not so much forest, with a dry season which permits the 
ripening of grain. Here the people practice agriculture, of which mil- 
let is the chief product. Survival in this region requires the exercise 
of foresight, since during the winter season the people have to subsist 
upon stored-up grain. Slave labor has been universal among these 
people, and one of the chief sources of supply has come from the sale 
of children by parents who failed to lay up a sufficient supply of grain. 
In this region there are cities of 20,000 or more inhabitants, where a 
considerable amount of trade and manufacturing is carried on. Cotton 
is gathered from the wild plant and spun and woven into cloth, sandals 
are made from cowhides, and hoes, knives, and other cutlery are made 
by the numerous smiths. 

South of the equatorial forest there is an agricultural zone corre- 
sponding to that of the north, and here the chief crop is manioc 
(tapioca). 

North of the millet zone the country is still more open, and dryer. 


BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA 5 


The forest dwindles toward the north and gives place to prairie. This 
is the great cattle region of the Sudan, and the Fellatahs, who rule over 
the darker Negroes of this and the millet region, here have the seat of 
their great empire. 

South of the manioc zone there is an open, prairie-like country cor- 
responding to that of the north, but of less extent because of the nar- 
rowness of the continent toward the south. Until the invasion of 
South Africa by the Dutch, this zone, which embraces most of Cape 
Colony, was occupied by the pastoral Hottentots, now nearing extinc- 
tion. 

The economic zones of Africa all extend laterally and uniformly 
across the continent except the cattle region, which embraces a narrow 
strip of plateau, extending from Nubia on the east to the Zambesi river, 
and almost connecting the cattle zone of the north with that of the south. 

The Negroes of Africa generally have the matrilineal form of the 
family, i. e., the children take the name of the mother, and inheritance 
is in the female line. In the equatorial zone, and partly in the agricul- 
tural zones, the support of the family, including the husband, devolves 
upon the wife. In these zones marriage is by gifts to parents, or by 
purchase. Chastity of women is little valued, chiefly because illegiti- 
mate offspring fare as well as the legitimate children, both being sup- 
ported by the mother. Polygamy is common, but it is by no means 
universal. | 

Generally, a higher stage of domestic life may be observed as one 
goes north or south from the equatorial forest. One meets with in- 
stances of romance between the sexes, marked affection between the 
parents and children, more value on chastity, more assistance from the 
father in the support of the family, better homes, better clothing, and 
some appreciation of zsthetic surroundings. 

The religion of the Negroes varies very widely in the different zones. 
In the equatorial belt it is animism or fetishism, involving much witch- 
ery, hocus-pocus, and human sacrifices. In the agricultural zones the 
religion is rather polytheistic, but retains much of the grosser super- 
stition of animism. 

In the cattle zone of the north, where the Fellatahs dominate, and 
in the cattle zone of the eastern plateau, the religion is largely Moham- 
medan, due to contact with the Arabs. 

Nowhere in Africa have the Negroes evolved a civilization, but they 
have shown capacity to assimilate it. In the region of the Fellatah Em- 
pire, before the arrival of the European, the natives had learned to read 


6 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





and write in Arabic, and had established several notable educational 
centers. 

It is no reproach to the natives of Africa that they did not evolve a 
civilization, for no other race has ever evolved a civilization in a hot 
and humid climate. The earliest civilizations, in both the Old and the 
New World, were developed in very dry regions. 

Ellsworth Huntington is inclined to think that the climate of Africa 
has tended to favor the survival of an inactive type of man. “In the 
first great migrations,” he says, “those who went to the tropical re- 
gions subjected themselves unknowingly to conditions which presumably 
tended toward stagnation or even toward retrogression, for moderate 
activity was often more profitable than great activity, while the abun- 
dance of resources and lack of the exigencies of the seasons tended to 
give the stupid almost as good a chance of survival as the intelligent.” ° 

From the earliest historic time, slaves have been carried from Cen- 
tral Africa by way of the Nile river, the Red Sea, and the Desert of 
Sahara, into Egypt and Arabia. After the rise of Mohammedanism, 
Negro slaves were imported into all of the Mohammedan States. The 
explorer Barth says that one could almost find his way across the Desert 
of Sahara by the skeletons of slaves strewn along the caravan routes. 

The beginning of European activity in the slave trade dates back to 
the fifteenth century, when explorers, under the inspiration of Prince 
Henry of Portugal, went forth to find an ocean passage to the East. In 
1441 one of the Portuguese ships anchored off the Sahara coast and 
brought back five black captives, who were not Negroes, but Moors. 
Soon thereafter a ship advanced as far south as the Senegal river, and 
captured and brought back to Portugal a number of Negroes. In 1444 
the Portuguese began systematic exploration along the African coast 
for the purpose of capturing and trading in Negro slaves. 

After the discovery of the New World and its colonization by white 
people, Negro slaves began to be imported to supply the demand for 
labor. Then the slave trade was taken up by the Spanish, the English, 
the French, and the Dutch. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
Slave ships fairly swarmed at the mouth of every river from the Senegal 
to the Congo. 

At first the slave ships obtained their cargo by captures made by 
night-surprises and the burning of coastal villages. Later the trading 
companies of each nation came to have permanent settlements on the 
coast, and to buy the slaves from native dealers. The rum, firearms, 

"Op. cit., p. 46. 


BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA i 


calico, beads, and so forth offered in exchange for slaves inflamed the 
avarice of the native kings, and they set out with organized armies to 
raid their neighbors and make captives. When a sufficient number of 
captives had been procured, they would be shackled and carried down 
to the coast in boats or overland in “coffles.” Upon their arrival at the 
coast, an agent of the slave-trading company would make purchases, 
brand the slaves, and place them in a stockade to await the arrival of a 
slave ship. 

In the eighteenth century, ships from the colonies of North Amer- 
ica began to engage in African slave trade. From the ports of Boston 
and Newport, ships laden with rum would set sail for Africa, where 
the rum would be exchanged for slaves. Then the slaves would be car- 
ried to the West Indies and exchanged for molasses to make more rum. 
Later, ships from New York, Charleston, and other Atlantic ports also 
took part in the trade. And, in spite of the action of the United States 
government in prohibiting the foreign slave trade after 1808, clandes- 
tine trips from the Atlantic ports continued to bring in slaves from the 
West Indies and from Africa until the Civil War. 

Beginning about 1510, Negro slaves were successively introduced 
into the Spanish, British, French, and Danish West Indies, and into 
Portuguese Brazil, their chief labor being the raising of sugar-cane for 
the manufacture of molasses and rum. The black codes, intended for 
the regulation of slavery in each colony, were formulated in the respec- 
tive mother countries and varied in details, but the actual treatment of 
the slaves depended upon local sentiment and custom, and was substan- 
tially the same under any of the codes. Because of the preponderance 
of male slaves and the hardships and incessant labor incident to the cul- 
tivation of sugar-cane, the Negro slaves died faster than they were 
born. The shortage of labor gave a continuous impetus to the slave 
trade. 

The most interesting and important history of the Negro in the West 
Indies is that connected with the island of Haiti, where to-day there 
exist two Negro republics, Santo Domingo on the eastern end of the 
island, and Haiti on the western end. 

In 1540, when the gold yield of the island of Haiti, then called His- 
paniola, fell off, the Spaniards in the west end of the island rushed off 
en masse to the newly discovered mines of Mexico and Peru. Into 
the vacated territory, French buccaneers, and later French immigrants, 
entered and in a short time, by cultivating sugar-cane with slave labor, 
developed the most prosperous colony of the West Indies. In the 


8 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


course of several generations a large mulatto class developed, and many 
of this class were emancipated and educated, but were not permitted to 
exercise the civil rights of free white men. 

In Paris, where mulattoes were generally sent for an education, there 
was organized in 1788 the “Société des Anus des Notrs,’ composed of 
such celebrated men as Robespierre, Condorcet, Lafayette, Brissot, and 
Grégoire, who were interested in the emancipation of slaves, and who 
believed that emancipated slaves in the colonies should have the same 
civil rights as the freemen of France. When the French Assembly 
formulated the famous Bill of Rights of August 20, 1789, the friends 
of the blacks in Paris wished to apply the principles of this Bill to the 
colonies. The planters in the French colony of Saint Domingue, aware 
of their numerical inferiority to the blacks, foresaw that such pro- 
nouncements from the mother country threatened the overthrow of the 
white man’s rule in the island, and they were therefore much alarmed. 
They sent delegations to Paris and, with the aid of the commercial class 
in France, influenced the French Assembly to declare against any in- 
tention of applying the Bill of Rights to the colonies. 

But the French policy in reference to Saint Domingue was vacillat- 
ing, and irritated both the free mulattoes and the white planters. 
Early in 1791 the mulattoes of the island, led by James Ogé, who had 
resided in Paris and had been incited by friends of the blacks in that 
city, launched a rebellion, but it was promptly suppressed by the militia. 
Ogé was broken on the wheel. 

The hostility of the mulattoes to the whites gradually permeated the 
slave class, and on the 22nd of August, 1791, with complete surprise to 
the whites, the slaves on the northern plantations arose in one great 
mass and began to burn property and massacre the whites. Ina few 
weeks 2,000 white people had been put to death, and 180 sugar planta- 
tions destroyed by fire. 

The French Assembly, alarmed at the news of the wholesale mas- 
sacre of the white people of Saint Domingue, hastened to declare against 
any further effort to interfere with the white man’s control of the col- 
ony. However, the new French Assembly, which met in October, 1791, 
was dominated by the Red Republicans, who promptly reversed the ac- 
tion of the prior assembly, declaring against any color discrimination in 
the colonies and dispatching 6,000 troops and several civil commis- 
sioners to Saint Domingue to enforce the Assembly’s decree. The com- 
missioners sent to the island were generally ardent champions of liberty, 
equality, and fraternity, and they took sides with the blacks. With the 


BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA 9 


support of French and Negro troops, they succeeded in driving out the 
whites and placing the blacks in complete control of the island. 

The intermediary of the transfer of authority in the colony from 
the whites to the blacks was Toussaint Louverture, the greatest military 
and diplomatic genius in the history of the Negro race. He was one 
of the leaders of the Black Rebellion of 1791, but soon thereafter he 
and some of his followers were induced to cross the line and take com- 
missions in the Spanish army. In the meantime the French Commis- 
sioners in Saint Domingue, being solidly opposed by the remnant of the 
white planters, and being menaced by the landing of British troops from 
Jamaica, decreed the emancipation of all slaves. 

In the spring of 1794 Toussaint, influenced by the action of the 
Commissioners of Saint Domingue in decreeing the emancipation of the 
slaves, transferred his allegiance back to the French, and when he re- 
turned from the Spanish colony he brought with him 4,000 well-trained 
Negro troops. With this force, supplemented by other regiments, he 
was able to compel the retirement of the British from the island, and 
later to invade and conquer the Spanish end of the island, thus making 
himself the master of the whole country. 

In 1802 Napoleon sent to the island 20,000 troops under the com- 
mand of his brother-in-law, Leclerc, with the purpose of restoring 
French authority. Toussaint’s armies were defeated and he was cap- 
tured and deported to a French prison in the Alps, where he died. 

In the meantime the French troops in Saint Domingue were deci- 
mated by an epidemic of tropical fever, General Leclerc himself died in 
December, 1802, and the British navy, because of the war between Eng- 
land and France, blockaded the coast and prevented relief to the french 
forces. Finally this remnant of French troops surrendered to the Brit- 
ish Admiral, leaving the way open for a return of Negro domination in 
the colony. 

General Dessalines, a former lieutenant of Toussaint Louverture, 
now (1804) proclaimed himself emperor. In the year following, how- 
ever, an insurrection broke out among the disaffected blacks, and Des- 
salines was shot from ambush. Following the death of Emperor Des- 
salines, a constitution was adopted defining the colony as a republic, 
and General Henri Christophe was chosen as the first president. 
Thereafter the name of the country and government came to be desig- 
nated as Haiti instead of Saint Domingue. 

The history of the Republic of Haiti has been characterized by al- 
most ceaseless revolution, and punctuated by frequent assassinations. 


10 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 








Life and property have been insecure, and the public revenues and pro- 
ceeds from foreign loans have been stolen or wasted by public officials. 
The republican features of the constitution have never been observed, 
and, with the exception of one or two administrations, the path 
to power has been by way of military usurpation. Roads, bridges, and 
schools have been neglected, and, from an industrial or moral point of 
view, scarcely any progress has been made in the past century. 

In 1916, owing to the inability of the Haitian government to meet 
its foreign obligations and to the disorders following a revolution, a 
treaty was made between Haiti and the United States, to be effective 
for at least ten years, giving the latter authority to collect and super- 
vise the customs revenue and to create a constabulary, composed of 
native Haitians, to preserve order, etcetera. 

The administration of Haiti by the United States during the past 
ten years has resulted in the restoration of order; an increase of rev- 
enue; a reduction of the public debt; the improvement of roads, public 
schools, and public sanitation; and in the inauguration of scientific 
methods of agriculture and husbandry. On the other hand, the adminis- 
tration has irritated the natives and has had to put down several insur- 
rections by force of arms and the proclamation of martial law. The 
Negroes of Haiti and of the United States, and also many members of 
the United States Congress and editors of newspapers and magazines 
in our country, have severely criticized our Haitian policy and urged 
our immediate withdrawal from the island. 

In 1844 the people of the eastern part of Haiti, who are Spanish- 
speaking Negroes, mostly of the mulatto type, rebelled against the mis- 
rule of Haiti and set up an independent republic, which, however, has 
run about the same course as that of Haiti. Its history has been largely 
that of revolution and reckless issue of bonds, and of official pecula- 
tion. In 1gor the government found itself in such a bad plight that 
the United States was invited to take charge of the custom-house as the 
only escape from bankruptcy. 

Negro slavery existed for more than a century in the West Indies 
before the first Negro set foot on the North American continent. In 
the fall of 1619 a Negro woman by the name of Angela was disem- 
barked on the Virginia coast from the ship Treasurer, of which the 
Earl of Warwick was the chief owner. Soon thereafter Negro slaves 
came in quantity from the West Indies, and later from Africa. In 1630 
the Dutch slave traders began to bring Negroes into New Amsterdam, 
and in 1634, from an unknown source, Negroes were coming into 


BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA II 


Massachusetts. About 1657, Negro slaves began to be employed by the 
Dutch and Swedes who had settlements along the Delaware river. By 
the close of the seventeenth century, Negro slavery had become an es- 
tablished institution in all of the original thirteen colonies except 
Georgia. 

In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Negro servants were as 
common as in Charleston. Among the aristocratic people of Boston, 
the slaveholding families included such names as Hopkins, Williams, 
Stiles, Edwards, Winthrop, Mather, and even Faneuil. 

In New York, the slaveholding families included the Murrays, the 
Chamberses, the Roosevelts, the Bayards, the Duanes, the Courtlandts, 
the Livingstons, the Nichollses, the Jays, and others whose names are 
still perpetuated in the designation of the streets of that great city. 

Economic and climatic factors determined the quantity and distri- 
bution of slaves in each of the colonies. In the Northern colonies, ex- 
cept during the pioneer period of forest-felling and extensive agricul- 
ture, slave labor was uneconomic because of the diversity and intensity 
of industry and because of the high cost of living. It was not profitable 
to raise slaves, and hence the frequency with which slave children were 
advertised for sale. Slave labor early disappeared from the farms and 
from commerce, and was retained only in domestic service, as a luxury 
for the rich. 

In the Tidewater region of the South, the extensive methods of agri- 
culture, the concentration on a single crop, and the low cost of living 
made slave labor profitable, and the Negro slaves found their chief 
market in this region. In the Piedmont region of the South, where the 
soil was poor and subject to washes, the farms smaller, and the cost of 
living higher, slave labor was less profitable, and the number of slaves 
was always far less than the number of free whites. In the Mountain 
region, where the soil was still less bountiful and no surplus could be 
produced, slavery scarcely existed. 

The introduction of slavery into the colonies was everywhere due 
to the same cause, to wit: the impossibility of securing free labor. Ina 
new country, where land is free, no one will voluntarily work for 
another, and the only means of obtaining a labor supply is some form 
of coercion. The indenture of white servants, the binding out of 
orphans, and the drafting of freemen for assistance in harvesting crops 
were some of the forms of compulsory labor commonly practiced in the 
colonies. 

On account of differences of climate, slaves were more in demand 


12 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

in the South than in the North. In the West Indies the idea prevailed 
that the heat and humidity of the climate would not permit white people 
to do manual labor, and the same idea came to dominate the white 
people of the Tidewater region of the South Atlantic colonies. Hence, 
the labor of the white people of these regions was mainly that of super- 
vision, In the Piedmont region of the Southern colonies it was a com- 
mon practice for masters and slaves to work together in the fields, and 
this practice continued after the Revolution and down to the Civil War. 
In the Mountain regions of the Southern states, where climatic condi- 
tions are much like those of New England, the white people were accus- 
tomed to manual labor, and generally looked with disfavor upon slavery. 

In all of the colonies, special laws, known as Black Codes, were 
made for the regulation of slave labor, and, while these laws differed 
somewhat, the actual treatment of the slaves was everywhere substanti- 
ally the same. Generally the slaveholders in all the colonies were the 
most enterprising class of people, and as a rule treated their slaves hu- 
manely ; but there were many slaveholders of a low order of intelligence, 
and of irritable and vicious tempers, who treated their slaves with great 
brutality. In proportion to the Negro population, there were about as 
many burnings of Negroes, and other barbaric ill-usages of them, in 
Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, as in Virginia, South Caro- 
lina, or Georgia. 

Slave labor in the North gradually disappeared because of its dimin- 
ishing profitableness and, by the time of the adoption of our Constitu- 
tion, it had been legally terminated in all of the Northern states except 
Delaware. 

The sentiment against slave labor which had developed in the North 
spread into the Upper South, and led to many private emancipations. 
In 1832 in Virginia, where slavery was becoming uneconomic, an effort 
was made to enact a law for gradual emancipation. 

After 1832, due to the increasing profitableness of cotton culture and 
the radical anti-slavery agitation in the North, the sentiment against 
slavery in the South is supposed by most historians to have died out, and 
the South to have become solidified in favor of an indefinite perpetua- 
tion of slavery. But this supposition is erroneous. What happened was 
that political leadership was transferred to the Lower South, which had 
become the center of the cotton culture and of the Negro population. 

The planters of the Tidewater region, here as in Virginia, had never 
looked with favor on the proposition to emancipate the slaves. On the 
other hand, the planters of the Piedmont and Mountain regions were 


BACKGROUND IN AFRICA AND AMERICA 13 


the leaders of the opposition to slavery in Virginia in 1832, and, after 
expanding into Tennessee and Kentucky, they continued their opposi- 
tion down to the Civil War, although they were rendered helpless and 
their voices repressed by the political domination of the Tidewater 
South. 

During the Civil War, the slaves to a remarkable extent remained on 
the plantations of their masters. A great many of them, however, were 
used for noncombatant military service, as teamsters, laborers on roads 
and fortifications, and in ordnance factories, salt mines, and so forth. 
Among the Confederate troops it was a common practice for the sol- 
dier of a well-to-do family to take with him to the front a Negro serv- 
ant, who performed the rough tasks that fell to the soldier, such as 
splitting wood and digging ditches, and who remained close at hand to 
aid his master when he was sick or wounded. The free Negroes, under 
act of the Confederate government, were liable to service in the army as 
laborers. 

On the side of the Union, Negro troops were enlisted from several 
of the Northern states, and from among the camp-followers of 
the Union armies in the Southern states, the total number enlisted being 
178,975. Negro troops rendered valuable service to the Union forces 
in several important battles. 

Before the close of the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and sev- 
eral religious and philanthropic organizations, took up the task of estab- 
lishing schools for the education of the Negro. During the Recon- 
struction period, many of these schools were merged into state public- 
school systems, while others remained under private control. Most of 
the present-day colleges and universities for the Negroes in the South 
were inaugurated by Northern religious and philanthropic organizations 
during the period of Reconstruction. 

At the close of the Civil War not more than ten percent of 
the Negroes could read and write, and, with this small foundation, the 
work has gone forward of enlightening the Negro masses of the South 
and preparing them for the duties and privileges of freemen. 






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PART TWO 


THE NEGRO IN THE NORTHERN STATES 
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i as Wl So By Sa ey 
ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE NORTHERN NEGROES 


Opportunities in the Skilled and Unskilled Trades—In Domestic Service—En- 
larging Field for Negro Labor in the Big Industries—Relation of the Negro 
to Union Labor—Negroes in the Mercantile Business and in the Professions 


N the Northern cities, for some decades after the Civil War, the 
Negroes found ready employment in domestic and personal service. 

Nearly all cooks, porters, waiters, and caterers in hotels and private 
homes were Negroes. I recall seeing in New York, in 1882, a great 
many Negro waiters in hotels and restaurants, and also many Negro 
coachmen, bootblacks, barbers, and janitors. 

In all of these occupations the Negroes have lost ground, for three 
chief reasons: First, the Negro population has not been large enough 
to supply the increasing demand for labor, and the shortage has had to 
be made up from white immigrants ; second, the rise in the standard of 
living of the whites has called for an increased efficiency in service and 
the Negro has not qualified himself; third, there have developed white 
trade-unions which excluded the Negroes from membership. 

The Negroes first lost ground in the business of bootblacking. The 
Italians, as chimney-sweeps in France, had perfected the art of polish- 
ing shoes by mixing the soot of the chimney with fat or oil, and, having 
driven the native Frenchman out of the business in Paris, they came to 
America and ousted the Negro. Then it was the turn of the coachmen. 
Having reference to Boston, Archibald H. Grimké says, “The coloured 
coachman got a black eye when people began to travel abroad, and to 
discover in England, for instance, how much more an English coach- 


man knows about horses and their care than a coloured one in Bos- 
ton.” 4 


Then came white barbers, butlers, cooks, caterers, and waiters in 
hotels. A Boston Negro, who could not find employment as a butler, 
exclaimed, “These Boston people beat me. They will have mass-meet- 
ings, and raise money to help Mr. Washington educate the ‘nig- 
gers’ down South, but they will let a decent Northerner starve before 

*Quoted by Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 167. 

17 


18 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


they will give him a chance to earn an honest living.” 7 Commenting on 
the loss of ground in New York, a Negro waiter remarks: “Think of 
our city’s most famous caterers of forty or fifty years ago. They were 
the Downings, Mars, Watson, Vandyke, Ten Eyck, Day, Green, and 
others, all coloured. Their names were as familiar and as representa- 
tive in high-class work as are Delmonico and Sherry to-day. Who have 
succeeded to the business that these coloured caterers had in those 
days? With one exception, Italians. Not one has left a child in an 
enlarged business of the same line. With all of us the business dies 
with the fathers. Is this showing a capacity to build?’ * Referring to 
Philadelphia, DuBois comments upon the general decline of industrial 
opportunity for the Negro, due to competition and race prejudice.‘ 

Writing in the New York Age, June 15, 1885, of the Negro in Chi- 
cago, Mrs. Fannie B. Williams declares: 

“It is quite safe to say that in the last fifteen years, the coloured 
people have lost about every occupation that was regarded as peculiarly 
their own. Among the occupations that seem to be permanently lost are 
barbering, bootblacking, janitors in office buildings, elevator service, and 
calcimining. White men wanted these places and were strong enough 
to displace the unorganized, thoughtless and easy-going occupants of 
them. When the hordes of Greeks, Italians, Swedes, and other foreign 
folks began to pour into Chicago, the demand for the Negro’s places 
began. One occupation after another that the coloured people thought 
was theirs forever, by a sort of divine right, fell into the hands of these 
foreign invaders. This loss was not so much due to prejudice against 
color, as to the ability of these foreigners to increase the importance of 
the places sought and captured. The Swedes have captured the jani- 
tor business by organizing and training the men for this work in such 
a way as to increase the efficiency and reliability of the service. White 
men have made more of the barber business than did the coloured men, 
and by organization have driven every Negro barber from the business 
district. The ‘shoe polisher’ has supplanted the Negro bootblack, and 
does business in finely appointed parlours, with mahogany finish and 
electric lights. Thus a menial occupation has become a well organized 
and genteel business with capital and system behind it.” 

The colored people have been supplanted also in some of their other 
traditional callings. Many Negroes who had come up from the South 

* Washington, The Future of the Negro, p. 161. 


* Quoted by Stone, op. cit., p. 155. 
*The Philadelphia Negro, pp. 120, 145. 


ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE NORTHERN NEGROES ig 
were expert carpenters. They had planned and built private houses 
for the white people, and also in some cases, important public buildings. 
In the North they found it difficult to get a job. Dr. William N. D. 
Berry, pastor of a colored congregation in Springfield, Massachusetts, 
said : 

“Eighty per cent of the coloured labor of our city is confined to 
servile employment by pure race prejudice which has closed the door 
of industrial employment against them. The situation in Springfield 
is fairly typical of the condition in this respect of the black man 
throughout the North.’ ® 

The exclusion of the Negro from the skilled trades used to be so 
general as to give rise to the assertion that there was more prejudice 
against the Negro in the North than in the South. General Armstrong 
once said: “There is a great deal more of antagonism between the two 
races here at the North than at the South. . . . I find much more mu- 
tual repulsion between the whites and blacks here in Massachusetts than 
down in Old Virginia.” ° 

In 1899, Booker Washington stated: “that with some exceptional 
cases, the Negro is at his best in the Southern States. While he enjoys 
certain privileges in the North that he does not have in the South, when 
it comes to the matter of securing property, enjoying business advan- 
tages and employment, the South presents a far better opportunity than 
the North. Few colored men from the South are as yet able to stand 
up against the severe and increasing competition that exists in the 
North, to say nothing of the unfriendly influence of labor organiza- 
tions, which in some way prevents black men in the North, as a rule, 
from securing occupation in the line of skilled labor." In his Up. 
from Slavery he again said, “Whatever other sins the South may be 
called upon to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is 
in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial 
world.” ® 

President Eliot of Harvard observed, “The uneducated Northern 
white is less tolerant of the Negro than the Southern whites. More 
trades and occupations are actually open to Negroes in Southern than 
in Northern States.” ® 


*Quoted by Evans, Black and White in the Southern States, p. 214. 


*Quoted by Field, Glimpses of New England Town Life in the Seventeenth 
and Eighteenth Centuries, p. 150. 


" Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 1899. 
PP ard. 
* Quoted by Evans, op. cit., p. 214. 


20 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


I do not at all share in the view that race prejudice is stronger in 
the North than in the South, but I agree with General Armstrong when 
he says, “Northern competition is harder on the Negro than Southern 
prejudice.” What appears to be Northern prejudice against the Negro 
is, for the most part, only the businesslike requirement of industrialism 
which demands high efficiency. In the traditional skilled trades in the 
North, the Negro has found the field preempted by the whites, but in 
recent years, skilled labor of a new and more varied kind has been open 
to him in some of the large manufacturing plants, although ninety per- 
cent of the Negroes employed in these plants are as yet unskilled 
workers. In Chicago about 10,000 Negroes work in the stockyards and 
packing plants. Other Negroes are in foundries, steel mills, and car- 
building shops. Negro women are employed in tobacco, canning, gar- 
ment, and novelty factories, and in laundries. Thousands of Negroes 
in Chicago are Pullman porters, and many work about freight houses 
and in railway construction. In Detroit about 3,000 Negroes are em- 
ployed in the automobile industries. In the Pittsburgh foundries and 
steel mills about 10,000 Negroes are employed. The Westinghouse 
Electric Company employs about 1,000. In Philadelphia the Negroes 
find work in the steel plants and other large industries. In New York 
the Negroes dominate in the industry of asphalt paving, and have a 
practical monopoly of the elevator service in residential districts. In 
many of the large cities of the North and West, Negro men or women 
are extensively employed to run elevators in hotels, office buildings, and 
department stores. The largest group of Negro workers in New York is 
the longshoremen. In 1920 there were 5,387 of these, fourteen percent 
of all the longshoremen of the city, and nine percent of all the Negro 
men at work. Sixty percent of all the Negro women working in New 
York are either laundresses or servants. The Negroes of New York 
have made less advances in the skilled trades than the Negroes of any 
other large Northern city, for the reason chiefly that New York has not, 
as have, for instance, Chicago and Detroit, a large number of great in- 
dustrial plants. 

In recent years, the restriction on foreign immigration has greatly 
increased the demand for unskilled labor, and the more liberal policy of 
labor unions has opened the door for an increasing number of Negroes 
to do skilled work. The former exclusion of Negroes from trade- 
unions was due to several causes. In the first place, all of the unions 
were organized by white workers, and custom rather than race feeling 
excluded men of color. In the next place, few Negroes have been quali- 


ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE NORTHERN NEGROES - a1 


fied for skilled work, and trade-unions have been very little concerned 
with unskilled labor. It has been very difficult for Negroes to get em- 
ployment in the skilled trades except when and where there has been a 
shortage of white labor. Both the employers of labor and the labor 
leaders prefer the employment of white labor. The labor leaders often 
give as a reason for preferring the white workers that the Negroes tend 
to keep down wages by their lower standard of living. The manager 
of a wholesale millinery house says, “I couldn’t overcome the prejudice 
enough to bring the (colored) people in the same building, and had to 
engage outside quarters for the blacks.” 7° 

During the World War, when there was an acute shortage of white 
labor, thousands of Negroes found employment in ship-building, meat- 
packing, and iron and steel industries. Wherever Negroes have come 
to be employed in skilled labor, it has been to the interest of the unions 
to admit them, or at least to encourage them to organize unions of 
their own. 

The American Federation of Labor has consistently followed a 
policy of racial non-discrimination, but of the 110 national and interna- 
tional unions affiliated with the Federation, eight expressly bar the 
Negro by their constitutions or rituals. These are the Brotherhood of 
Railway Carmen of America, The International Association of Mecha- 
nists, the American Association of Masters, Mates and Pilots, The Rail- 
way Mail Association, the Order of Railroad Telegraphers Union of 
America, ‘The American Wire Weavers Association, and The Brother- 
hood of Railway Mail Clerks. About twenty-eight national unions 
which do not bar the Negro report that they have no Negro members. 
Some of the unions which exclude Negroes do so because by tradition 
the trade belongs to the whites, and no Negroes have tried to enter it. 
In some unions open to Negroes, there are no Negro members because 
of the technical character of the trade and the long period of appren- 
ticeship. 

Generally speaking, there is no great opposition to Negro member- 
ship in unions whose members carry on a trade in which the Negroes 
are employed or are likely to be employed. About 104 national and in- 
ternational unions admit the Negro. Some unions admit Negroes ta 
any local branch, while others provide separate locals for Negro mem- 
bers. 

In a number of cases Negroes are excluded from locals even when 
the policy of the national organization favors their admittance. In such 


* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 390. 


22 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





cases, admission requires a majority or two-thirds vote of the local 
group, and the whites vote against a Negro applicant. 

Negroes often get employment in large industries as strike breakers, 
and, after the strike, hold their jobs. This happened, for instance, in 
the Pullman strike of 1916, and the steel strike of 1919. 

Because the Negroes are very meagerly represented in the skilled 
trades they have had very limited opportunities for displaying their in- 
ventive genius. Nevertheless, several Negroes have distinguished 
themselves by the variety and importance of their inventions. For ex- 
ample, Granville T. Woods of Ohio has taken out nearly sixty patents. 
“Among his inventions,’ says Brawley, “may be found valuable im- 
provements in telegraphy, including a system for telegraphing from 
moving trains, also an electric railway and phonograph. Some of his 
work has been sold to the Bell Telephone Company. Elijah McCoy, 
of Detroit, Michigan, has been granted about thirty patents, relating 
particularly to lubricating appliances for engines. Many of his inven- 
tions have long been in use on the locomotives of the Canadian and 
Northwestern railroads, and on the steamships of the Great Lakes. 
Mr. McCoy began work as early as 1872 and has succeeded in reaping 
large rewards in royalties for the use of many of his inventions. W. B. 
Purvis, of Philadelphia, has been granted several patents having to do 
with paper bag machinery. F. J. Ferrell, of New York, deserves men- 
tion for his valves; and J. EK. Matzeliger, of Massachusetts, is credited 
with being the pioneer in the art of attaching soles to shoes by machin- 
ery. An invention that attracted considerable attention a few years 
ago was that of a rapid-fire gun by Eugene Burkins, of Chicago.” ™ 

In mercantile enterprises the Negroes do not show aptitude. A 
handicap in this line is that a Negro merchant has to depend almost en- 
tirely upon his own race for patronage, while his white competitor can 
draw patronage from both races. His chief drawbacks, however, are 
a lack of foresight in buying, lack of taste in display, lack of neatness, 
and the general unreliability of Negro clerks. In the large Negro col- 
onies of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, or 
Detroit, there are trading opportunities of a petty character open to the 
Negroes. But even in the largest of these colonies the stranger seldom 
sees a prosperous or attractive-looking Negro store. In the midst of 
these colonies, or on the outskirts, are found enterprising Italians, Jews, 
and Greeks, who flaunt their wares before the Negro, and capture a 
large share of his patronage. 

“ History of the American Negro, p. 231. 


ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE NORTHERN NEGROES 23 


Among the enterprises conducted by Negroes, the most successful 
seem to be insurance companies and undertaking establishments. 

In the professions, there are Negro preachers, lawyers, doctors, 
dentists, and editors, but with rare exceptions they serve only their 
own race. In Boston several lawyers and physicians of respectable 
standing are patronized by white people.’* The Negroes generally 
get their professional education at Howard University, Washington, 
D, C. There are not many professional schools which open their doors 
to Negroes. ‘The white medical schools are difficult for the Negro to 
enter for the reason that as internes they would have to treat white 
patients. “It is a curious fact,’ says Baker, “that not only the white 
patients but some Negro patients object to colored doctors.’’ 1% Never- 
theless, at this writing, for the first time in the history of Bellevue Hos- 
pital, New York City, a Negro doctor is serving a year’s interneship. 
This doctor chances to be a woman, Agnes O. Griffin, a native of North 
Carolina. She was graduated from the Washington Irving High 
School, New York, in 1915, received the A.B. degree from Hunter Col- 
lege in 1919 and that of M.D. from Columbia University in June, 1923. 
Her appointment as an interne was due to her merit as a student of 
medicine. After her general service Dr. Griffin hopes to specialize in 
children’s diseases. 

About half a dozen other Negro women have qualified for the prac- 
tice of medicine. 

In many cities of the North and West, Negro women are employed 
as teachers in the public schools. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a col- 
ored woman, Maria Baldwin, is principal of the Agassiz school, which 
is attended by 600 white children. In the public schools of Columbus, 
Ohio, there are about a dozen colored teachers. 

In New York, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and most other big 
cities, the Negro is represented on the police force, and in several cities 
he is employed in the fire department. 


“Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 124. 
™ Ibid., p. 123. 


CHAPTER 3 
DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YORK 


The Housing Problem—Negro Quarters in New York—Harlem, the Great Negro 
Capital—Social Activities and Social Stratification—Human Nature As Seen 
at the Bottom and at the Top 


1 Oa of their natural gregarious tendencies and the difficulty 
of renting or buying homes among the whites, the Negroes of the 
Northern cities generally live in segregated districts. 

“The color line,” says Jacob Riis, “must be drawn through the 
tenements to give the picture its proper shading. The landlord does the 
drawing, does it with an absence of pretence, a frankness of despotism, 
that is nothing if not brutal. The Czar of all the Russias is not more 
absolute upon his own soil than the New York landlord in his deal- 
ings with colored tenants. Where he permits them to live, they go; 
where he shuts the door, they stay out. By his grace they exist at all 
in certain localities ; his ukase banishes them from others.” 4 

The Negro quarters generally comprise the old residences aban- 
doned by the whites, into which the Negroes are packed like sardines. 
“In most northern cities,’ says George Haynes, “the housing condi- 
tion shows a majority of the Negro families coming North are griev- 
ously overcrowded and in practically all of the cities the rents for them 
have been far in excess of those for residents who are residing at 
the same time in similar localities. A survey made by the Federation 
of Churches of Buffalo in 1922 disclosed the fact that about 75 percent 
of the colored families occupied a section of that city which contained 
the poorest houses, some of which had formerly been condemned as 
not habitable. A similar survey made by the Federated Churches of 
Cleveland showed that while a substantial part of the colored people 
have secured good houses, inadequate and unsanitary conditions still 
exist in one of the principal Negro communities of the city. 

“In Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Housing Association found in a 
recent survey that only 10.5 percent of the houses occupied by Negro 

* How the Other Half Lives, p. 148. 

24 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YORK 25 


families were equipped for sanitation, convenience and comfort, while 
28.6 of the houses occupied by whites were so equipped.” ? 

In New York City the earliest Negro quarter consisted of some old 
barracks on the edge of the town once occupied by soldiers and later 
used as a poor-house. 

In the middle of the last century, when Washington Square and 
lower Fifth Avenue were the center of aristocratic life, the colored 
people, whose chief occupation was domestic service in the homes of 
the rich, lived in scattered nests to the south, east, and west of 
the square. Negro churches were then located on Church, Leonard, 
Mott, and Anthony Streets. From the middle of the last century to 
about 1875 the Negro residences centered on Thompson Street. 

From 1875 to about 1890 the Negro quarter consisted of old resi- 
dences and store buildings on Seventh Avenue and the cross streets 
from 25th to 42nd, and adjacent to this quarter was the worst red 
light district in the city, the successor to the celebrated “Five Points” 
of lower New York. Jacob Riis says of the Negro of this district: 
“His home surroundings, except when he is utterly depraved, reflect 
his blithesome temper. The poorest negro housekeeper’s room in New 
York is bright with gaily-colored prints of his beloved ‘Abe Linkum,’ 
General Grant, President Garfield, Mrs. Cleveland, and other national 
celebrities, and cheery with flowers and singing birds. In the art of 
putting the best foot foremost, of disguising his poverty by making a 
little go a long way, our negro has no equal. When a fair share of 
prosperity is his, he knows how to make life and home very pleasant 
to those about him. Pianos and parlor furniture abound in the uptown 
homes of colored tenants and give them a very prosperous air. But 
even where the wolf howls at the door, he makes a bold and gorgeous 
front. The amount of ‘style’ displayed on fine Sundays on Sixth and 
Seventh Avenues by colored holiday-makers would turn a pessimist 
black with wrath. Poverty, abuse, and injustice alike the negro accepts 
with imperturbable cheerfulness. His philosophy 1s of the kind that 
has no room for repining.” * 

About 1890 the Negroes began to occupy 53rd Street from Sixth 
Avenue to Ninth Avenue, which had become undesirable for the whites 
because of the elevated railway’s traversing this narrow street, filling 
it with intolerable noise and smoke, and darkening the first and sec- 
ond stories of the residences. From this street the Negro quarter 

*“Negro Migration,” Opportunity, Oct., 1924, p. 304. 

MOD. CD. 153. 


26 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





spread to a dozen or more adjoining blocks, and housed a population of 
about 50,000. 

“The West Fifty-third Street settlement,” says the Negro poet, 
James Weldon Johnson, ‘‘deserves some special mention because it 
ushered in a new phase of life among colored New Yorkers. Three 
rather well appointed hotels were opened in the street and they quickly 
became the centers of a sort of fashionable life that hitherto had not 
existed. On Sunday evenings these hotels served dinner to and at- 
tracted crowds of well-dressed diners. One of these hotels, The Mar- 
shall, became famous as the headquarters of Negro talent. There gath- 
ered the actors, the musicians, the composers, the writers, the singers, 
dancers and vaudevillians. There one went to get a close-up of Wil- 
liams and Walker, Cole and Johnson, Ernest Hogan, Will Marion Cook, 
Jim Europe, Aida Overton, and of others equally and less known. 
Paul Laurence Dunbar was frequently there whenever he was in New 
York. Numbers of those who love to shine by the light reflected from 
celebrities were always to be found. The first modern jazz band ever 
heard in New York, or, perhaps anywhere, was organized at The Mar- 
shall. It was a playing-singing-dancing orchestra, making the first dom- 
inant use of banjos, saxophones, clarinets and trap drums in combina- 
tion, and was called ‘The Memphis Students.’ Jim Europe was 
a member of that band, and out of it grew the famous Clef Club, of 
which he was the noted leader, and which for a long time monopolized 
the business of ‘entertaining’ private parties and furnishing music for 
the new dance craze.” 4 

About 1900, because of the encroachments of business in the 
Fifty-third Street quarter, the Negroes began to form a settlement 
in Harlem. “Harlem,” says Johnson, ‘‘had been overbuilt with large, 
new-law apartment houses, but rapid transportation to that section 
was very inadequate—the Lenox Avenue Subway had not yet been 
built—and landlords were finding difficulty in keeping houses on the 
east side of the section filled. Residents along and near Seventh Avenue 
were fairly well served by the Eighth Avenue Elevated. A colored man, 
in the real estate business at this time, Philip A. Payton, approached 
several of these landlords with the proposition that he would fill their 
empty or partially empty houses with steady colored tenants. The 
suggestion was accepted, and one or two houses on One Hundred and 
Thirty-fourth Street east of Lenox Avenue were taken over. Gradu- 
ally other houses were filled.’’ > 


‘Johnson, “The Making of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 
° Thid. 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YORK a7 


Now the Negro quarter extends from Eighth Avenue to the Har- 
lem river and from 130th Street to 150th Street. It contains a popula- 
tion of nearly 200,000, and is the great Negro capital of the world. 
“Here in Manhattan,” says the Survey Graphic, “is not merely the 
largest Negro community in the world, but the first concentration in 
history of so many diverse elements of Negro life. It has attracted 
the African, the West Indian, the Negro American; has brought to- 
gether the Negro of the North and the Negro of the South; the man 
from the city and the man from the town and village; the peasant, the 
student, the business man, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, 
adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and social 
outcast.”’ 

Harlem is a miniature Negro world. A stranger walking through 
Lenox Avenue or Seventh Avenue would see only Negro faces. He 
would see Negro churches, theaters, schools, banks, undertakers, pawn- 
shops, mercantile establishments, barber shops, beauty parlors, hotels, 
restaurants, cabarets, pool-rooms, drug stores, news stands, fruit ven- 
dors, and even Negro cab drivers, and Negro policemen. 

“Harlem,” as viewed by Johnson, “is in many respects typically 
Negro. It has many unique characteristics. It has movement, color, 
gaiety, singing, dancing, boisterous laughter and loud talk. One of its 
outstanding features is brass band parades. Hardly a Sunday passes 
but that there are several of these parades of which many are gorgeous 
with regalia and insignia. Almost any excuse will do—the death of an 
humble member of the Elks, the laying of a corner stone, the ‘turning 
out’ of the order of this or that.’ ® 

A noticeable feature of Harlem is its great number of fakirs. In 
reference to this, Winthrop D. Lane says: “Black art flourishes in Har- 
lem—and elsewhere in New York. Egyptian seers uncover hidden 
knowledge, Indian fortune-tellers reveal the future, sorcerers perform 
their mysteries. Feats of witchcraft are done daily. A towel for turban 
and a smart manner are enough to transform any Harlem colored man 
into a dispenser of magic to his profit. 

“Come with me into any little stationery store on Lenox or Sev- 
enth Avenue—the two main business thoroughfares of the district— 
and peep into the dream and mystery books there offered for sale. 
Some of these can be bought, as said, for fifteen or twenty cents, others 
cost a dollar. Here is one called Albertus Magnus. It is described as 
the ‘approved, verified, sympathetic and natural Egyptian secrets, or 


¢“The Making of Harlem,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 


28 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
SU eA RTS NUN RETA Ste 
White and Black Art for Man and Beast, revealing the Forbidden 
Knowledge and Mysteries of Ancient Philosophers.’ Another is Na- 
poleon’s own Oraculum and Book of Fate, containing the explanations 
of dreams and other mysteries consulted on every occasion by Napo- 
leon himself.” 7 

A singular fact about the Negro population of Harlem is that its 
foreign-born element seems to take the leadership. The famous Negro 
poet, Claude McKay, and the great organizer of the movement to re- 
claim Africa for the blacks, Marcus Garvey, are natives of Jamaica. 

“It is safe to say,” remarks W. A. Domingo, “that West Indian rep- 
resettation in the skilled trades is relatively large; this is also true of 
the professions, especially medicine and dentistry. Like the Jew, they 
are forever launching out in business, and such retail businesses as are 
in the hands of Negroes in Harlem are largely in the control of the 
foreign-born. While American Negroes predominate in forms of busi- 
ness like barber shops and pool-rooms in which there is no competition 
from white men, West Indians turn their efforts almost invariably to 
fields like grocery stores, tailor shops, jewelry stores and fruit vending 
in which they meet the fiercest kind of competition. In some of these 
fields they are the pioneers or the only surviving competitors of white 
business concerns. In more ambitious business enterprises like real 
estate and insurance they are relatively numerous. The only Casino and 
moving picture theater operated by Negroes in Harlem is in the hands 
of a native of one of the small islands. On Seventh Avenue a West 
Indian woman conducts a millinery store that would be a credit to Fifth 
Avenue.” ® 

“There is a diametrical difference between American and West In- 
dian Negroes in their worship. While large sections of the former are 
inclined to indulge in displays of emotionalism that border on hysteria, 
the latter, in their Wesleyan Methodist and Baptist churches maintain, 
in the face of the assumption that people from the tropics are necessa- 
rily emotional, all the punctilious emotional restraint characteristic of 
their English background. In religious radicalism the foreign-born are 
again pioneers and propagandists. The only modernist church among 
the thousands of Negroes in New York (and perhaps the country) is 
led by a West Indian, Rev. E. Ethelred Brown, an ordained Unitarian 
minister, and is largely supported by his fellow-islanders.” ® 

“Lane, “Ambushed in the City,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 


*“The Tropics in New York,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 
*Domingo, “The Tropics in New York,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YORK 29 


The Englishman, Maurice Evans, referring to Harlem, says: “I 
visited possibly over a hundred negro homes in New York, some of 
them independent houses or villas; others flats, two-roomed or one- 
roomed apartments. As regards the houses of the well-to-do negroes or 
mulattoes, everything was in good taste. The houses were clean. The 
furniture was solid, well-designed, and tasteful. The appointments of 
the dining table were such as the most fastidious English man or 
woman could not object to. There were well furnished libraries, and all 
the new appliances of civilization at their highest perfection—such as 
telephones, bathrooms, dinner-lifts, electric fans, heating apparatus— 
in regard to which New York is so much in advance of London. The 
poorest part that I visited, in what was declared by the police to be the 
worst existing tenements in the negro quarter, was clean, wholesome, 
and attractive as compared to the dwellings of many respectable, hard- 
working Londoners. 

“The staircases, for example, were always clean and well lit; there 
was none of that horrible odour of the imditscretions du chat (as the 
French delicately phrase it) which is so characteristic of the frowsy, 
early-nineteenth-century houses of respectable lower-middle-class Lon- 
don; there were no disagreeable smells of bad cooking; the sanitary 
arrangements appeared to be quite up-to-date and devoid of offence. 
The people I visited of the poorer class were cooks (of both sexes), 
longshoremen, railway porters and car attendants; train-conductors, 
seamstresses, washerwomen, and so forth. Their rooms seemed to be 
comfortably furnished, and were superior in every way to the worst 
slums of London.” ?° 

Harlem has a rich social life which expresses itself through its 
numerous church societies, its lodges, and its women’s clubs, and, on 
the lower levels, through its dance halls, cabarets, pool-rooms, and 
gambling dens. “In Harlem,” says Winthrop D. Lane, “‘there are cab- 
arets to which both white and colored people are admitted. There are 
cabarets where white and colored sit at the same table, dance together, 
talk together, drink together, leave together. Many flashy young people 
of both colors come to these and get riotously or near riotously merry ; 
some less flashy people come; and some sober and sedate folk sit at the 
tables. All told there are about fifteen cabarets in Harlem. A few 
cater only to the well-behaved, others to the less well-behaved, and some 
to roughnecks.” 1 


* Evans, Black and White in the Southern States, p. 474. 
*“Ambushed in the City,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 


30 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





It is a far cry from the katydids and crickets of the rural South 
to the nocturnal jazz of Harlem. 

A wag once remarked that, “The Jews own New York, the Irish 
run it, and the Negroes enjoy it.” 

As in the outside world, so in Harlem there is social stratification 
and a color line. Among the élite, who are quite distinctly a mulatto 
element, the dances, dinners, marriages, and other social functions are 
carried on with all the decorum and formality characteristic of the 
rich whites. 

“Unfortunately,” says Walter F. White, “color prejudice creates 
certain attitudes of mind on the part of some colored people which 
form color lines within the color line. Living in an atmosphere where 
swarthiness of skin brings, almost automatically, denial of opportunity, 
it is as inevitable as it is regrettable that there should grow up among 
Negroes themselves distinctions based on skin color and hair texture. 
There are many places where this pernicious custom is more powerful 
than in New York—for example, there are cities where only mulattoes 
attend certain churches while those whose skins are dark brown or 
black attend others. Marriages between colored men and women whose 
skins differ markedly in color, and indeed, less intimate relations are 
frowned upon. Since those of lighter color could more often secure 
the better jobs, an even wider chasm has come between them, as those 
with economic and cultural opportunity have progressed more rapidly 
than those whose skin denied them opportunity. 

“Thus, even among intelligent Negroes there has come into being 
the fallacious belief that black Negroes are less able to achieve success. 
Naturally such a condition has led to jealousy and suspicion on the part 
of darker Negroes, chafing at their bonds and resentful of the patron- 
izing attitude of those of lighter color.’ ” 

If in Harlem Negro humanity is found in its lowest depths, it is alsa 
found in its highest intellectual and spiritual flights. Here one finds 
Negro scholars, novelists, poets, painters, sculptors, and musicians, 
who sense the longings of the mass, and catch glimpses of a new horizon, 

“White, “Color Lines,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 





CHAPTER 4 
DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN CHICAGO 


The Black Belt of Chicago—Character of the Houses—Opposition to Selling 
or Renting Houses to Negroes in White Districts—Methods Employed 
to Keep the Negroes Out—Claim That Negro Invasions Depreciate Prop- 
erty—Negro Quarters in Philadelphia and Other Cities 


N Chicago the chief Negro quarter embraces the area from Twelfth 
Street to Thirty-first Street, and from Wentworth Avenue on the 

west to Wabash Avenue on the east, and is known as the “Old South 
Side” or “Black Belt.” About ninety percent of the Negroes live in this 
quarter, although there are half a dozen other Negro quarters scattered 
over the city. The houses in the Black Belt are generally abandoned 
residences of the whites, or tenements of an old type, in varying stages 
of dilapidation. ‘The ordinary conveniences, considered necessities by 
the average white citizen, are often lacking, Bathrooms are often miss- 
ing. Gas lighting is common, and electric lighting is a rarity. Heating 
is done by wood or coal stoves, and furnaces are rather exceptional ; 
when furnaces are present, they are sometimes out of repair.” + 

The prevailing type of dwelling in the Black Belt is described as 
“frail, flimsy, tottering, unkempt, and some of them literally falling 
apart. Little repairing is done from year to year. ... The surround- 
ings in these localities were in a condition of extreme neglect, with little 
apparent effort to observe the laws of sanitation. Streets, alleys, and 
vacant lots contained garbage, rubbish, and litter of all kinds. ... 
From thirty-five to forty percent of the Negro houses of the West side, 
and many in the North Side, are of the type above described.” ? 

Negroes have to live next door to a low class “dive,” where “dis- 
orderly white women meet colored men”; where “an automatic piano 
thumps through the night until closing hours. On the mirrors are 
pasted chromos of ‘September Morn’ and other poses of nude women.” 
The loud profanity is blended with “the midnight honking of automo- 
biles.” ° 

One of the reasons for the dilapidated character of the Negro 

*Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 152. 

*Ibid., p. 192. 

*Tbid., p. 202. 

31 


32 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





houses is that the landlord, knowing the difficulty of the Negro’s finding 
a house elsewhere, does not feel compelled to keep up repairs. An- 
other reason is that, when a Negro purchases a house on the instal- 
ment plan, the periodic payments often leave nothing for maintenance. 
In order to help meet the payments he takes in lodgers who hasten 
the deterioration of the property.* Only about three to five percent 
of the Negroes of Chicago own their homes, as compared to fifteen per- 
cent of the whites. A handicap to the Negro’s buying a home “is the 
low security rating given by real estate loan concerns to property ten- 
anted by Negroes. Because of this, Negroes are charged more than 
white people for loans, find it more difficult to secure them, and thus 
are greatly handicapped in efforts to buy or improve property.” ° If 
a Negro has the means, and attempts to buy a home outside of the 
Black Belt, he has two difficulties to overcome. One is the opposi- 
tion of property owners or real estate agents to selling property to a 
Negro. The other is the hostile attitude of his white neighbors, which 
sometimes manifests itself merely in scornful looks or taunts and some- 
times in acts of violence. 

If the Negroes attempt to form a new settlement of their own in 
an outlying district, “there is the biggest hubbub raised. People ex- 
claim: ‘You will ruin this whole neighborhood. You will ruin the 
street car line!’ Everything out in that neighborhood will be ruined all 
along the street, because if you build up a colored neighborhood in any 
one particular location nobody else will want to go out that way.” ® 

A real estate dealer of Chicago says that “when a Negro moves into 
a block, the value of the properties on both sides of the street is depre- 
ciated all the way from $100,000 to $500,000, depending upon the value 
of the property in the block. . . . It is a condition that is inherent in 
the human race . . . a man will not buy a piece of property or put his 
money in or invest in it where he knows that he is liable to be 
confronted the next day or the next year or even five years hence with 
the problem of having colored people living alongside of his investment. 
This depreciation runs all the way from 30 to 60 percent. Some time 
ago a survey was made as a result of which it was estimated that the 
influx of Negroes into white neighborhoods during the last two years 
had depreciated property on the South Side about $100,000,000.” 7 

*Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 201. 

"Ibid., p. 215. 

*Statement of a real estate dealer. Ibid., p. 225. 

"Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 205. 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN CHICAGO 33 


“When a Negro family moves into a block in which all other fam- 
ilies are white, the neighbors object. This objection may express itself 
in studied aloofness, in taunts, warnings, slurs, threats, or even the 
bombing of their homes. White neighbors who can do so are likely to 
move away at the first opportunity. Assessors and appraisers in deter- 
mining the value of the property take account of this general dislike 
of the presence or proximity of Negroes. It matters little what type 
of citizens the Negro family may represent, what their wealth or stand- 
ing in the community is, or that their motive in moving into a predom- 
inant white neighborhood is to secure better living conditions—their 
appearance is a signal of depreciation.” ® 

Some white women of Chicago seem to have a greater fear of the 
Negro than the white women of any section of the South. For instance, 
a white woman, testifying before the Chicago Commission on Race 
Relations, said, in reference to her Negro neighbors: “TI tell 
you the white people on this street have to be afraid of their lives.” ® 
Another white woman, living next door to a Negro family, said: 
“You'll be surprised when [ tell you that I haven't been able to open 
my bedroom window on that side to air that room for three years. I 
couldn’t think of unlocking the windows because their window is so 
near somebody could easily step across into this house. It’s awful to 
have to live in such fear of your life... . Why, I couldn't sit on my 
porch on the hottest day because I’d be afraid they would come out 
any minute. And what white person will sit on a porch next door 
to a porch with black ones on it? Not me, anyhow, nor you either 
I hope.” ?° 

During the World War, when the rapidly increasing Negro popu- 
lation of Chicago forced the Negroes to find housing accommodations 
outside of the Black Belt, there was an intensified opposition to the in- 
vasion of Negroes into white districts. The most pronounced opposi- 
tion to Negro invasion was developed in the Kenwood and Hyde Park 
district, which lies between State Street and Lake Michigan, and between 
Thirty-ninth and Fifty-ninth Streets. In 1916 the Negroes of the 
Black Belt began to overflow into this white residential district. 
Property values in certain streets of this district had been already de- 
preciated by the erection of apartment houses and the incoming of a 
rooming and boarding population of whites. The difficulty of finding 

*Tbid., p. 195. 
*Tbid., p. 440. 
“ Tbid.; p. 453. 


34 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





white tenants and buyers led to the renting and sale of houses to the 
Negroes." 

In 1918 a movement was begun to ‘make Hyde Park white,” and 
took the form of “The Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners 
Association.” The Property Owners Journal of December 13, 1919, 
said: “Property conservatively valued at $50,000,000 by some 10,000 
individuals is menaced by a possible Negro invasion of Hyde Park. 
The thing is simply impossible and must not occur.” 1? In the issue of 
February 15, 1920, is the statement: “Certain classes of Negroes such 
as the Pullman porters, political leaders and hairdressers are clamor- 
ing for equality. They are not content with remaining with the 
creditable members of their race, they seem to want to mingle with the 
whites. . . . Keep the Negro in his place amongst his people and he is 
healthy and loyal. Remove him, or allow his newly discovered 
importance to remove him from his proper environment and the Negro 
becomes a nuisance. He develops into an overbearing, inflated, iras- 
cible individual, overburdening his brain to such an extent about so- 
cial equality that he becomes dangerous to all with whom he comes in 
contact, he constitutes a nuisance, of which the neighborhood is anx- 
ious to rid itself.” ?° 

The Kenwood and Hyde Park Association professed to use only 
lawful means of ousting Negro residents. Its method was to arouse 
public sentiment and get the cooperation of all real estate dealers. In 
case a Negro purchased property in the district, the association used 
persuasion to induce him to sell, and offered him what it considered a 
fair price for his property. For example, a Negro bought a house in the 
district for $9,000. An agent of the association called on him and 
pleaded with him to sell. The Negro refused. Then the agent offered 
to give the Negro $9,500 for his property. The Negro refused this offer 
also and declared that he would not take less than $11,500 for his 
house.*4 

The feeling of opposition to the Negro invasion spread to the 
“rowdy” whites who sought to oust the Negroes by violence. They 
began to bomb houses owned or occupied by Negroes. “From July 1, 
1917, to March 1, 1921, the Negro housing problem was marked by 
fifty-eight bomb explosions. Two persons, both Negroes, were killed, a 


* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 117. 
i Dias (Dec E2T. 
OI D122; 
"Ibid... p.) 127: 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN CHICAGO 35 


number of white and colored persons were injured, and the damage to 
property amounted to more than $100,000.” 1° 

The usual method of bombing was to drive an automobile by the 
house at midnight and place the bomb under the steps or throw it 
through the glass door. The police were powerless to apprehend the 
culprits. The Kenwood and Hyde Park Association disclaimed any 
connection or sympathy with the bombing, and the better white people 
of the district, through the pulpit and press, denounced these acts of 
lawlessness. The Negroes organized the ‘‘Protective Circle of Chicago” 
to combat the lawlessness and to bring pressure to bear upon the city 
authorities to apprehend the bomb-throwers.'® 

Sometimes the Negro property holder would yield to persuasion 
or to intimidation and sell, but in most cases he would not. Many of 
the Negroes who moved out were forced to do so through the cancella- 
tion of leases and the foreclosure of mortgages. By such means, the 
Association stated, sixty-eight Negro families had been moved by the 
summer of 1920."7 

The housing problem in Chicago is not half as serious as the ra- 
cial troubles of 1916-2c led the citizens to believe. In Chicago, as in 
other cities, the Negroes gravitate by preference toward one or several 
Negro neighborhoods. The Negroes are very little inclined to invade 
choice residential districts because of the high cost of the property and 
their disinclination to live in uncongenial surroundings. Those of them 
who have the means and desire to move out of an undesirable Negro 
quarter generally buy or rent in a more select Negro settlement, or in 
a white neighborhood where they become the nucleus of a new Negro 
settlement. In either event they generally move into a district where 
property values are low, and where white people of moderate means 
have been likewise attracted because of the low values. Since the 
Negroes and whites are on the same economic level, they live side by 
side without animosity, though without intermingling. 

The idea, prevalent among real estate agents and other people gen- 
erally, that the presence of Negroes in any district depreciates property, 
is often founded upon a misapprehension of the facts. It is often the 
case that the fall in property values precedes the incoming of Negroes, 
and is due to the invasion of a white residence district by apartment 
houses, theaters, garages, and a boarding population, causing the gen- 

** Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 122. 


BT bid Dak 313 
" Thid., p. 134. 


30 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





eral flight of the home-owners to a new residence center. This was cer- 
tainly the cause of the fall in values in a section of the Hyde Park dis- 
trict invaded by the Negroes in 1g19.*® 

Among themselves the Negroes have a social life full of variety and 
richness—dances, banquets, picnics, women’s clubs, mah-jong parties, 
bridge parties and the like. The Negro press devotes a great amount 
of space to social functions. A Chicago paper, reporting the anniver- 
sary dance of the Bon-Vivant Club, says: 

“The spacious grand ball room of the Vincennes Hotel never was 
more resplendent with glowing radiant young women magnificence; and 
gallant young gentlemen, scions of the rising tide of wealth and esthetic 
culture of our race. 

“The lofty ceiling of the ball room, by a novel arrangement of a 
myriad of multicolored electric lights reflected a soft mystic illumina- 
tion of entrancing beauty. At close intervals, great clusters of vari- 
colored balloons of all sizes and shapes floated high above the dancers’ 
heads, with billowy cloudlike effect—in appearance—kissed by the light 
of a June sunset. 

“The orchestra, in a decorated triangular enclosure in the northeast 
corner, rendered a melange of inspiring music. 

“Until as late as 11 o’clock, dozens of people braved the inclement 
weather, and stood at advantageous points near the canopied and car- 
peted entrance to the hotel, and watched and admired the lovely be- 
gowned ladies and their faultlessly dressed escorts as they debarked 
from the autos which arrived in almost endless procession, from nine 
until eleven o’clock. 

“Gorgeous liveried footmen, and pages and also most polite and at- 
tentive maids was a feature of the perfect committee in charge of ar- 
rangements.” 

In Chicago, as in New York, the Negroes are stratified socially. 
The prosperous and educated class of Negroes live mostly in scattered 
nests outside of the Black Belt. 

In Philadelphia the chief Negro quarter is in Ward Seven, where 
there are a number of alley-streets hardly wide enough for a cart 
to pass through. The houses are tenements of two or three stories. 
They abut directly on the sidewalk, and the occupants on opposite 
sides of the street can sit in their respective front windows and ex- 
change gossip. This is the only district in Philadelphia which is no- 
toriously slummy. 

* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, pp. 195-200. 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN CHICAGO 37 


In Boston the Negro quarter is in the South End, where the houses 
are partly abandoned residences of the whites and partly new tene- 
ments.*® 

In Cleveland, Ohio, the Negro quarter is centered on Central Ave- 
nue, Cedar Street and Dove Street, where the housing conditions are 
much the same as in the Black Belt of Chicago. 

In Indianapolis the Negroes are segregated in various back streets 
and alleys, and occupy cheap one-story frame tenements of two or 
three rooms.”° 

On the fringes of the Negro quarters in nearly all cities there are 
white residents, and in some streets the whites and blacks are inter- 
spersed. Outside of the Negro quarters also, in scattered neighbor- 
hoods there are found groups of white and black people living side 
by side. In some of these neighborhoods the races seem to be adjusted 
to each other and get along harmoniously, while in others they live like 
cats and dogs. 

One of the worst phases of the home life in the Negro quarters is 
the large number of lodgers per house. The reason for this is chiefly 
that the Negro tenant feels compelled to take in lodgers to meet the 
high rents. 

In any of the cities of the North (or South, for that matter) the 
conditions are very unfavorable for a wholesome family life. 

Married Negro women, to a greater extent than the married women 
of any other group in the United States, carry on some kind of gain- 
ful occupation and work away from home. In most Northern cities the 
Negro women outnumber the men. 

“The city,” says Charles Johnson, “actually attracts more women 
than men. But surplus women bring on other problems, as the social 
agencies will testify. “Where women preponderate in large numbers 
there is proportionate increase in immorality because women are 
cheap.’ . . . The situation does not permit normal relations. What is 
most likely to happen, and does happen, is that women soon find it an 
added personal attraction to contribute to the support of a man. De- 
moralization may follow this—and does. Moreover, the proportion 
of Negro women at work in Manhattan (60.6) is twice that of any 
corresponding group, and one of the highest proportions registered any- 
where. 7 


Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 120. 
* Baker, op. cit., p. 112. 
=“Black Workers in the City,” Survey Graphic, Mar., 1925. 


38 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


The family life of the city Negroes is also greatly handicapped by the 
employment away from home of young boys and girls. Over three 
times as many Negro boys as native whites between the ages of ten 
and fifteen are at work, five times as many girls. It is encouraging to 
note, however, that the proportion of Negro women workers, as also 
of Negro children workers, was less in 1920 than in Igto. 


CHAPTER 5 
RACIAL SEPARATION 


Negro Churches, Clubs, Fraternal Orders, Hotels, Theaters, Dance Halls, and 
So Forth—Refusal or Discouragement of Negro Patronage by Public 
Resorts and Private Businesses Primarily for Whites—Avoidance of Em- 
barrassment through Exercise of Good Sense by Both Races 


Ne only in respect to their place of residence, but in nearly every 
other respect, the Negroes in the North tend to live apart from 
the whites. The degree of segregation generally varies with the mass 
of the Negro population. In cities where the number of Negroes is 
large the segregation is sharply limited, while in cities where Negroes 
are few there is much freer commingling with the whites. Further- 
more, in cities where the Negro population is large the degree of social 
separation varies in each locality with the number of Negroes who are 
thrown in contact with whites. 

In the Negro quarters everywhere one notices exclusive Negro 
churches, Y. M. C. A.’s, fraternal orders, theaters, restaurants, and so 
on. 

Wherever the Negro, outside of his segregated quarter, comes in 
contact with the whites, whether he is on a business mission or is 
merely seeking recreation, there is apt to be friction between the races, 
especially in cases where the Negro attempts to enter resorts patron- 
ized exclusively by the whites. 

Very frequently embarrassment, lawsuits, and even acts of vio- 
lence grow out of the unadjusted contacts of the Negro and Caucasian 
in the Northern states. 

In Boston, says Baker, “several hotels, restaurants, and especially 
confectionery stores will not serve Negroes, even the best of them. The 
discrimination is not made openly, but a Negro who goes to such places 
is informed that there are no accommodations, or he is overlooked and 
otherwise slighted, so that he does not come again.’* Even Booker 
Washington was turned away from hotels in Boston and Springfield. 
Similarly there are numerous hotels in Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus,” 


*Following the Color Line, p. 120. 
*Quillin, The Color Line in Olio, p. 146. 
39 


40 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





Dayton,* and other cities which refuse to admit Negroes. Some 
years ago there was much newspaper comment over the refusal of a 
white maid in an Indiana hotel to make up a bed occupied by Booker 
Washington. Also, a few years ago, much ado was made over the 
refusal of hotels to receive Negro delegates at a Methodist General Con- 
ference held in Los Angeles. When I was living in Madison, Wis- 
consin, a Negro glee club visiting the city had to be provided for 
privately because no hotel would lodge them. 

Restaurants adopt a variety of ruses to avoid Negro patrons. The 
Chicago Tribune, referring to a famous restaurant in that city, says: 

“When a negro entered and askéd to be served he was seated in the 
usual way at a table on which were no menu or price cards. Presently 
a price card was laid before him. And in that price card lay all the 
effectiveness of the strictest Southern ‘Jim Crow’ law. It read some- 
thing like this: 


Coffee, per Cup We ities PUM ER SS Me, 
Cottee, with creamitvenuie sete 75 
Bread sand i Dutretaeei ei ees 1.00 
Bork CHOpS sien ae ea ate 8.00, etcetera. 


One glance at that card and its awful prices was usually enough to 
send the colored man hurrying out of the place.” One summer evening 
at an open air restaurant in Chicago I saw a group of Negroes seat 
themselves at a table. After they had been tardily served, one of them 
arose and spoke to the proprietor in a complaining manner of the prices 
charged. The proprietor refunded the overcharge upon the understand- 
ing that the Negroes would not return. Referring to the situation in 
New York, the Sun says: “In restaurants the waiters keep within the 
law. They do not say ‘We will give you no dinner,’ but ‘We are busy 
now.’ And the Negro may look at his empty plate, if he will, from 6 
o’clock until midnight, and the excuse will be the same.” 

Helen Foil, writing to the Charlotte Observer from Boston, relates 
this story: “A negro entered a barber shop here and asked for a shave. 
The barber at first refused, but the law is on the negro’s side. He 
told the Negro he would have to wait, and, after about an hour’s time, 
he re-appeared with a razor which he had fixed for the purpose. He 
had taken an old one and had hammered on it with something heavy 
until it was dented and the edge broken in several places. He said to 
the Negro: ‘The law compels me te give you a shave, but by George, 

*Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio, p. 136. fe 


RACIAL SEPARATION 4I 


this is what I am going to do it with. The Negro gave one look at the 
razor and fled.” 

Several years ago a white man in the Harvard Square barber shop 
refused to shave a Negro, and had to pay a fine of $20 for the dis- 
crimination. 

In many Northern theaters Negro patrons find it difficult to secure 
seats except in the “nigger heaven.” They are informed at the box 
office that all the parquet seats are sold. Negroes, however, very fre- 
quently get good seats by sending a white person to buy them.‘ 

Many stores, especially clothing stores, shun Negro patronage as 
much as possible.® 

In transportation there is no discrimination against the Negro in any 
Northern city except that some cab companies will not serve Negroes. 
On railway trains the Negros may ride unmolested in a Pullman car or 
parlor car. Friction between the races, however, often occurs on trans- 
portation lines through rudeness or ill manners on the part of one or the 
other or both. I was once riding on a crowded Pennsylvania Railroad 
train between Philadelphia and New York, and two Negro men were 
occupying separate seats in the same coach. The conductor politely 
asked if they would kindly sit together. They both flatly refused. In 
many cases the Negro is not only disposed to take all that the law al- 
lows but a good deal more. Speaking of Columbus, Ohio, Quillin says: 

“When a negro boards the street car he proceeds to get a seat 
whether there is one vacant or not.” A colored photographer “was on 
a street car one evening when a negro, fresh from his work in the steel 
mill, with his filthy working clothes on, boarded the car and, although 
there was no room, crowded into a seat by the side of a white woman, 
elegantly dressed. When the colored photographer remonstrated with 
him for his action, he turned and said, ‘I’m no d—d white man’s nigger 
like you. I have a right here, and I am going to take it.’ The conduc- 
tor came along and put him off the car, the colored photographer giving 
the conductor his name as a witness if needed.” © 

Riding in a crowded street car with Negroes is often very unpleas- 
ant for the white people. When Professor B. H. Meyer of the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin returned from a trip to Washington, where for the 
first time he came in contact with any considerable quantity of Negroes, 
he said in a talk to the student body he had made the discovery “that a 

*Quillin, op. cit., p. 136. 


*Ibid., p. 136. 
Pa Rid De Tie 


42 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Negro in Georgia is a very different thing from one on a seat ahead of 
you in the street car.” 

Negroes are generally admitted to the municipal hospitals, though 
in some cases, as in Cincinnati, they occupy a segregated ward.” Some- 
times the white people rebel against the intermingling of the races in 
the same ward. For example, Miss Minerva Teague of Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin, expressed great indignation and humiliation because her 
niece, ill with pneumonia, was put in a room in the city hospital with 
a Negress. There was a column story about it in the Sentinel of De- 
cember II, 1904. 

The use of the Chicago parks -by Negroes is regulated by custom 
and varies with the degree of antagonism to Negroes in the park neigh- 
borhood. Negroes are not inclined to intrude where a park is predomi- 
nantly patronized by the whites, and in a few localities white hood- 
lums prevent Negroes from using the parks. Negroes have been kept 
out of the public golf tournament at Jackson Park by the requirement 
that participants be members of a golf club affiliated with the Western 
Golf Association.® ‘Separate racial grouping is the rule at the beaches, 
though it is not always voluntary.” 7° 

In Indianapolis, where Douglass Park has been provided as a spe- 
cial resort for Negroes, many good results, it is claimed, have followed, 
such as “‘the elimination of friction and dangers that have heretofore ex- 
isted between the races; a decrease in police supervision and costs of 
trials; a fifty-per-cent increase in property valuation in this part of 
the city; and a higher rating of the value of Negro citizenship.” 7 

“Association in such places as hotels, restaurants, barber shops, 
dance halls, and theaters is often limited by tradition and custom in 
the North as strictly as by regulation in the South.” ?” 

There is one town in the North where the Negro is not allowed to 
live, and there are several such towns in the West. One of these is the 
town of Syracuse, Ohio, on the Ohio river, four miles above Pomeroy. 
The population is mixed, including many Welsh and Germans. Most 
of the people are day laborers working in the mines and factories. 
Anti-Negro towns in Indiana are Lawrenceburg, Ellwood, and Sa- 
lemme 

*Quillin, op. cit., p. 146. 

“Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, pp. 294-6. 

* lbtd., Dp. 277. ® Tbid., p. 286. 

“W. P. Todd, “Douglass Park,” Southern Workman, Aug., 1923. 


“Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 231. 
* Baker, op. cit., p. 126, 


RACIAL SEPARATION 43 


In some Northern cities there are educated and refined mulattoes 
whose unobtrusive manners give them the freedom of all public places. 
They are welcomed as members of white churches, fraternal orders, 
and clubs. For example, William Stanley Braithwaite of Boston is a 
member of the Authors Club. And Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt of Cleve- 
land, Ohio, is a member of a white church and resides in a street among 
white residents. 

It is needless to add that, except in public places, there is little or 
no social intermingling of the whites and Negroes anywhere in the 
North or West. Speaking of the situation in Cleveland, Ohio, Quillin 
remarks that the race relations are there exceptionally harmonious but 
says: “There is no social equality between the two races and at the same 
time there is no bitterness over it. ... 

“Men of the two races meet as friends on the streets or in a busi- 
ness way, but their relation is never extended to the home life. The 
white man will not think of such a thing as introducing a colored per- 
son to his wife, nor will he have them meet on the same social plane.” 

As a consequence of the social separateness of the races there are 
only rare instances of intermarriage and these, in most cases, occur only 
in the lower strata of both races. The Negro author, W. H. Thomas, 
declares that where the Negroes and whites intermingle, the whites are 
generally on a lower plane than the Negroes.® 

The social aloofness of the whites and Negroes from each other is 
not a matter of hostile prejudice, but merely a matter of conscious- 
ness of kind which inclines each race to prefer its own in all intimate re- 
lationships. It is quite consistent with mutual respect and sympathy. 

The racial problem in the North seems to be this: How to pre- 
serve separateness in all intimate relationships, and, at the same time, 
intermingle in all public places with due regard to mutual rights and 
feelings. 

In the North the racial pique growing out of the social contacts is 
due mainly to the failure of each race to recognize one fundamental 
element of justice—good manners. 

In any city, or section of a city, in the North where the Negro popu- 
lation is relatively small it is not possible for the Negro to find accom- 
modations furnished by his own race, and it is a hardship for him to be 
denied accommodations primarily designed for white people. For hu- 
manitarian reasons, therefore, the Northern people have made it un- 


“Op. cit., pp. 156-7. 
% The American Negro, p. 406. 


44 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





lawful to discriminate against the Negro in any public resort, and in 
most instances, especially where the number of Negroes is small, the 
whites welcome Negro patrons or at least serve them and treat them 
courteously. But there are some white proprietors of establishments 
who seek to debar Negroes even where the number of Negro patrons 
would be insignificant and where the refusal to serve them would be 
a hardship to them. In cases of this kind the whites are much at fault, 
doing injustice to the Negro and displaying very bad manners. 

On the other hand, the Negro is often at fault in seeking accommo- 
dations where he does not need them and where his patronage would 
be disagreeable to the white people and injurious to their business. 

In all Northern cities having Negro inhabitants, there are many 
places of resort where Negro patronage is understood to be desired, 
and others where it is not. Certain hotels in predominantly white dis- 
tricts, certain fashionable restaurants, barber shops, beauty parlors, ice 
cream parlors, and clothing stores, do not want Negro patrons. In 
many cases Negro patronage is turned away, not because of prejudice 
on the part of the proprietor, but because of pure business considera- 
tions. White proprietors of certain classes of establishments know 
that the presence of Negroes in any considerable number would drive 
away their more desirable white patrons. The Negroes generally know 
where they are welcome and where they are not, and their good sense 
keeps them away from places where their presence might involve em- 
barrassment to both races. 

However, there is a small class of Negroes of obtuse sensibilities 
who, obsessed with their legal rights, delight in intruding where they are 
not wanted, thereby offending the white people and intensifying race 
prejudice. For any citizen to go where his presence is unwelcome 
or injurious to the business of a white proprietor, provided other ac- 
commodations are available, is neither fair nor good manners. No 
statutory decree can give one the moral right to offend or injure an- 
other when he might avoid doing either without harm to himself. No 
self-respecting white man wishes to intrude himself where he is not 
wanted. Most of the race friction could be avoided by the exercise 
on the part of both the whites and blacks of common sense and good 
manners. 

The mass of colored people in the North as in the South have both 
common sense and good manners, and are no more inclined than white 
people to go where they are not wanted. Says Frank Quillin in an ar- 
ticle in the Independent on “The Negro in Cleveland’: 


RACIAL SEPARATION 45 


“Ordinarily the colored people of Cleveland are very thoughtful 
about intruding themselves upon the white people in any way that 
would be disagreeable for either race. This is shown in their attitude 
toward frequenting the white man’s eating place or restaurant. When 
I asked any of the white people about this, the usual reply was, ‘Well, 
since I come to think about it, I never see a colored man in any restau- 
rant where I eat. I suppose they would feed him if he should come in, 
but as he knows that there is generally some feeling about that question, 
I suppose he has the good sense to stay away or patronize his own res- 
taurant.’ And that he does, for his own self-respect.” 


Eee GO 
THE NEGRO. AS A CITIZEN 


His Part in Politics—Bad Influence of the Negro Vote in Some Cities—Share 
of the Negro in the Spoils of Office 


N the Northern and Western states there are no franchise laws 

which prevent any considerable number of Negroes from voting. 
All of the Negroes are Republicans, partly because they credit their 
emancipation to the Republican party, partly because they are a gregari- 
ous people, and would probably vote according to color even if they had 
been emancipated by the free will of their masters. If the Negtroes 
would divide on the basis of convictions and vote independently, each 
political party would be attentive to Negro public opinion and eager to 
pick out properly qualified Negroes for office. 

At present the Negro vote is large enough to hold the balance of 
power in Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois, 
Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and could turn the scale of the presidential 
vote in any of these states. But the Negroes always vote one way and 
no party ever concerns itself seriously about such a group. The Negro 
voters need not be considered in the formulation of policies or the nom- 
ination of candidates. All that is necessary to keep them in line is to 
throw them a few political plums and not entirely overlook them in the 
distribution of campaign funds. A considerable element of the Negro 
citizens expect substantial rewards for their votes, and if they fail to 
get them they make loud complaints, threatening to vote against their 
party or not to vote at all. The clamor of the Negroes for compensa- 
tion for their franchises gives to their patriotism a sordid aspect which 
often excites the contempt of party leaders and the party press. In 
some cities the Negro vote is decidedly venal, especially in municipal 
elections. 

“In Springfield,” says Baker, “there were about 1,500 Negro voters, 
many of whom were bought at every election. The Democrats and 
Republicans were so evenly divided that the city administration was 
Democratic and the county administration Republican. The venal 
Negro vote went to the highest bidder, carried the elections, and, with 
the whiskey influence, governed the town... . 

46 


THE NEGRO AS A CITIZEN 47 


“In the South the Negro has been disfranchised by law or by intimi- 
dation; in the North by cash. Which is worse?” ? 

The Cincinnati Post, speaking of the Negro as a political factor in 
that city, says: “In one ward 2,793 between the ages of twenty-one and 
thirty-one are registered, exceeding the number in the next most 
thickly populated ward by more than 600. These men will be voted 
en bloc, and so determine the city’s mayor, its judges and other 
officials.” ? 

The Negroes have made a poor showing in the political conventions. 
Here they often decide the contest between rival aspirants, and the temp- 
tation is very great for the white boss to influence the Negro vote with 
cash. Norman P. Andrews in an article entitled ‘““The Negro in Poli- 
tics,’ published in the Journal of Negro History, October, 1920, says: 

“Early in the winter of the year when the president is to be nomi- 
nated, persons supporting the administration usually visit the South lay- 
ing plans for lining up these prospective delegates. Politicians inter- 
ested in other candidates make similar tours through the South some- 
times lavishly handling funds to the extent of buying up delegates.” 

The Negro author, Thomas, says that the colored man is regarded 
as a “political commodity, to be bought and sold to the highest bidder ; 
and he has been, and is, bought and sold in state and national conven- 
tions by men who pose as examples of integrity and champions of the 
rights of man.” * 

There is no more disgusting sight than to witness the coddling, 
fawning, and general effacement of self-respect among the white dele- 
gates at any convention where the Negro vote is a factor. One of the 
chief reasons why the white Republicans in the South favor a “lily 
white” party is that the methods which have to be employed at political 
conventions to influence the Negro vote are repellent to white men of 
moral stamina. 

In states and counties where Negroes are a considerable element of 
the population, they have to be appeased occasionally by the election or 
appointment of one of their number to an office. In most cases quali- 
fications are ignored, the choice of the Negro to be rewarded being gen- 
erally left to the Negroes themselves. 

In Massachusetts there is generally one Negro member of the lower 
house of the legislature. In Ohio there is usually one in the lower 

*Following the Color Line, pp. 202-3. 


*Quoted by the Public, June 15, 1917. 
®The American Negro, p. 311. 


48 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


house, and occasionally two members of the house and one of the 
senate. When the Republicans place a Negro on their ticket the Demo- 
crats sometimes also put a Negro on their ticket for the same office with 
a view of dividing the Negro vote. Negroes often sit as members of a 
city council or board of aldermen. 

The Negroes, however, are generally placated by the gift of some 
appointive office of minor importance. There are many Negro janitors 
about the state capitols, county courthouses, city halls, and other public 
buildings. In Ohio a Negro sometimes gets the job of deputy sheriff, 
assistant county clerk, court reporter, or policeman. 

In speaking frankly about the Negro’s part in politics in the North, 
it would be well to keep in mind the fact that the Negro of that section 
is concentrated in the big cities, and that the white politicians of those 
cities have been generally men of a low type of citizenship, often very 
corrupt, and have not set the Negro a good example of civic righteous- 
ness. 


CHAPTER 7 
CRIMINALITY OF THE NEGRO IN THE NORTH 


Reason for Greater Criminality in the North Than in the South—Reasons for 
Greatest Criminality in the West—Reason for Existence of Great Crime 
Center in Chicago—Paramount Importance of Bad Environment As a Cause 
of Negro Crime 


HE criminality of the Negro is much greater in the North than in 

the South, for the reason that in the North the Negro generally 

lives in cities where the temptations to and opportunities for crime are 

many, whereas, in the South, the Negro generally lives in the country 

where the temptations and opportunities are fewer. Some overzealous 

friends of the Negro have denied this,1 but in so doing have closed 
their eyes to both statistics and reason. 

Crime is everywhere more common in cities than in rural districts, 
and the Negro race is no exception to this rule. That the Negro com- 
mits more crime in the North discredits neither the North nor 
the Negro. It merely illustrates the truth that black and white alike are 
influenced unfavorably by the city environment. 

The criminal tendency of the Negro can be measured only by com- 
paring the quantity and kind of crime committed by him and by white 
people in the same or similar environments. 

In Chicago the Negroes constitute only 4.5 percent of the popula- 
tion, but are responsible for 13.1 percent of all convictions for felonies, 
and 17.1 percent of the indictments for murder.? In r1g1o, the police 
records show, nearly three times as many Negroes as whites were ar- 
rested in proportion to their respective numbers in the population, the 
Negro percent of arrests being 11.5.8 For the six-year period ending 
January I, 1920, Negro arrests for misdemeanors, according to police 
records, averaged 8.20 percent and for felonies, 11.13 percent.” * Of 
the total convictions for misdemeanors, the Negroes average 8.5 per- 

*Haynes, The Negro at Work in New York City, New York, 1912. 

Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 330. 

e1Did., PD. 335: 

*Tbid., p. 336. 

49 


50 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





cent and of felonies 13 percent.© The records of the juvenile court 
show that Negro boy offenders constitute over twice the proportion of 
Negroes to the total population, and that Negro girl offenders consti- 
tute three and one-half times the proportion of Negroes to the total 
population.® The kind of offenses committed by Negro boys does not 
seem to differ notably from the kind committed by white boys, except 
that the Negro boys take the lead in larceny.’ 

The records of the criminal court of Chicago for 1917-18 show that 
the Negroes are responsible for 12.6 percent of the sex crimes. “The 
sex offenses of the Negroes were committed for the most part only 
against Negroes, and the specific charges were rape, attempted rape, 
accessory to rape, crimes against children, indecent liberties, contribut- 
ing to delinquency, incest, adultery, murder by abortion, bigamy, crimes 
against nature, seduction and bastardy.” § 

The figures above quoted, however, can be taken only as throwing 
some light on the sex criminality of the Negro and not as accurate sta- 
tistics, for the reason that they include only cases passing through the 
social service department of the criminal court. 

In the state prisons of Illinois the Negroes constitute twenty-three 
percent of the inmates. The high percentage of Negroes in these 
prisons, as compared to their percentage of convictions as indicated by 
the police records of Chicago, may be accounted for by the longer terms 
of sentence and the fewer paroles of Negroes, as compared to white 
prisoners. As to the behavior of Negroes in prison, the records indi- 
cate “that Negroes are less amenable to discipline than the whites, but 
that their violations of rules are not so grave. The percentage of Negro 
inmates whose conduct was marked satisfactory was smaller in all in- 
stitutions than the percentage of whites.” 1° In the Chicago House of 
Correction for adult misdemeanants, the Negroes constitute twenty per- 
cent of the total inmates.t. In the state school for delinquent boys 
(St. Charles), the Negro boys constitute 12.5 percent of the inmates,” 
In the state school for delinquent girls, the Negro girls constitute 18.5 
percent of the inmates. 

* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 336. 
© bid. bp 1333: 
* Tbid., p. 334. 
*Thid., p. 332. 
*Tbid., p. 338. 
* Thid., p. 338. 
“Tbid., p. 340. 
* [bid., p. 339. 


CRIMINALITY OF THE NEGRO IN THE NORTH 51 


The criminality of the Negro, and also of the whites, in Chicago, is 
much greater than the records indicate for the reason that the police 
records are very incomplete.’ 

In the report of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations there 
is evidence of a general effort to attribute the excessive crime and vice 
of the Negroes of that city to the recent migrants from the South,’* 
but this effort seems to be supported only by sectional prejudices. The 
statistics show that whereas the Negro population doubled from 1914 
to 1919, the Negro crime rate for the period increased only fifty per- 
cent.° If the migrants from the South were more criminal than the 
Chicago-born Negroes the increase of crime would at least have kept 
pace with the increase of the Negro population. While the imputation 
of high criminality to the migrant Negroes is indefensible, there is rea- 
son to believe that the criminality of Negroes in Chicago, as also of the 
whites, at all periods, is swollen by the constant incoming of vicious 
classes from every direction. 

However it is very unfair to judge of the criminal tendencies of the 
Negro by looking only at the statistical data. If we go behind the 
statistics we shall find much to lessen their significance and much to 
mitigate the offenses which the statistics record. 

In the first place, Chicago is the most criminal city in the civilized 
world. It harbors 10,000 professional criminals,'® and has more mur- 
ders per annum than England and Wales with their 38,000,000 popula- 
tion. It has 2,146 more burglaries than London, and twenty-two rob- 
beries for one in London.*7 As to what extent the criminality of 
Chicago may be due to incompetence and corruption in the administra- 
tion of justice, I am unable to form an opinion, but a residence of one 
year in that city led me to think that the citizens generally were a su- 
perior type physically and morally, and that they had a reputation for 
crime which they did not wholly merit, because of the exceptional facili- 
ties for entrance and exit which the city offers to the criminal class. In 
any other large city, for instance New York City, the places of ingress 
and egress are limited, so that it is difficult for a criminal to enter or 
depart without apprehension by the police, But Chicago is the greatest 
railway center in the world, and its railways radiate in all directions, 


% Tbid., p. 327. 

“Ibid., pp 333, 349, 339, 350. 
* Ibid., pp 331-3. 

* Tbid., p. 327 

"Thid, p. 328. 


52 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
and each of them has from half a dozen to twenty stations where pas- 
sengers may get off and on a train within the city limits. Hence, a 
criminal has thousands of means of entering or leaving the city by rail. 
The same relative facility exists for entering and departing by automo- 
bile, for the reason that the number of highways radiating from Chicago 
exceeds the number of any other city. When we add to these railway 
and highway entrances and exits those afforded by water transporta- 
tion, we can see why looking for a criminal in Chicago is like looking 
for a needle in a haystack, and why the worst criminals for a thousand 
miles around flock to Chicago to commit crime. 

As Chicago tends to attract white criminals from the regions round 
about, so also it attracts Negro criminals. Thus a considerable amount 
of crime committed by both whites and Negroes in Chicago is due to 
the criminal drainage from other sections. 

Other facts which need to be taken into account in explanation of the 
criminal statistics of Negroes is that Negroes are more easily arrested, 
identified, and convicted than white people. 

But to whatever extent the Negro is criminal, the most important 
cause, and the one which ranks ahead of any racial trait, is the bad en- 
vironment in which he lives. In Chicago, as in other cities, because of 
the residential segregation, crowds of the Negroes, good and bad, are 
obliged to live in the same district, and often in the same tenement. 
Hence the better element of the Negroes is always being contaminated 
and dragged down by the worse. Then, too, in Chicago the Negro quar- 
ter and the vice quarter have always been close together, and in spots 
interblended.1* The Vice Commission report of 1911 said: 

“The history of the social evil in Chicago is intimately connected with 
the colored population. Invariably the large vice districts have been 
created within or near the settlements of colored people. In the past 
history of the city every time a new vice district was created downtown 
or on the South Side, colored families were in the district moving in 
just ahead of the prostitutes. The situation along State Street from 
Sixteenth Street south is an illustration.” +9 In 1912 the vice district 
designated by the police contained the largest group of Negroes in the 
city, with most of their churches, Sunday schools, and societies. The 
Vice Commission report further said “that practically all of the male 
and female servants, connected with houses of prostitution in vice dis- 
tricts and in disorderly flats in residence sections, are colored.’ *° 





* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 342. 
™ Ibid., p. 343. ” Ibid., p. 343. 


CRIMINALITY OF THE NEGRO IN THE NORTH = 53 


The vice resorts of white people tend to gravitate toward the Black 
Belt “because in this district there is less likelihood of effective inter- 
ference either from citizens or public authorities.” ?* On the other 
hand, the Negroes gravitate toward the vice centers because of the low 
rentals resulting from the undesirableness of the neighborhood.” 
The high percentage of vice among the Negro women of Chicago is in 
keeping with the extraordinarily bad surroundings in which they have 
to live and the precariousness of their employment. The manager of a 
big concern in Chicago told a member of the Commission on Race Re- 
lations “that his plant had dismissed more than 500 Negro girls for 
business reasons. ‘These girls, it was stated, could not easily find re- 
employment, and were therefore probably exposed to certain necessi- 
ties and temptations from which white girls of comparable status are 
exempt. 7° 

A difference between Negro and white criminals is that the former 
more generally act on impulse and act alone; the latter act more gener- 
ally upon premeditation and in partnership with others. Leroy Steward, 
Chief of Police of Chicago, says “that the Negro criminals work as in- 
dividuals. I only recall one instance where there was a gang of colored 
men that came to my attention but I know of many white gangs.” 4 

* Tbid., p. 344. 

™ Ibid., p. 344. 

L0t0.,D.) 332. 

* Ibid., p. 346. 


CHAPTER 8 
FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 


Frequent Occurrence of Clashes and Riots Due to Race Friction—The Springfield 
Riot of 1908—The Waukegan Riot of 1917—The St. Louis Riots of 1917— 
The Chicago Riot of 1919 


N the large cities, racial clashes are very common. They take the 

form of individual fights, of fights between groups of Negroes and 
whites, or of gang attacks upon a single individual. Of course, the 
provocation comes sometimes from the whites and sometimes from the 
Negroes, but I believe that race clashes in all sections of the country 
are more often provoked by the whites. 

In the Negro quarters there are generally certain streets or neigh- 
borhoods which harbor the worst class of Negro criminals, and, in 
proximity to these Negro quarters, there are generally corresponding 
centers for the worst type of white criminals. The chief racial dis- 
turbances arise from the contact of these two criminal groups, and from 
individuals of either group stealing, holding up, and otherwise molest- 
ing people not belonging to the criminal class. 

Referring to the San Juan Hill in New York City, a police- 
man said, in 1900, “plain-going, honest Negro longshoremen, on their 
way home from work have been beaten for a month past by hoodlums 
along Tenth Avenue and have been left in the gutter for dead.’ ! 

Following a number of white hoodlum attacks upon Negroes, 
Magistrate Brann remarked: 

“It’s getting so the colored people have no right in this city. But 
they’ll get justice while I am sitting in this court.” ? 

In Chicago in February, 1917, a crowd of white boys assembled in 
front of a tenement house, on Forty-sixth Street, into which a Negro 
family had moved, and stoned the building, breaking out every window 
in the upper floors. The police rescued the Negroes, who moved to other 
quarters.°® 

In the same city, May 27, 1917, a group of ten white men entered a 

*New York Times. 

> New York Sun, quoted in Charlotte Observer, Sept. 23, 1900. 

* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 53. 

54 


FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 55 





saloon on South State Street and, when a Negro came in and called for 
a drink, one of the white men knocked him down and kicked him out of 
the door. The Negro picked up some brickbats and the whites followed 
him and beat him over the head with their revolvers.* 

On the night of June 21, 1917, “there were two wanton murders of 
Negroes by gangs of white hoodlums.” ® 

Among the racial clashes on a larger scale which rise to the dignity 
of riots, the following are of the more recent and outstanding: 


THE SPRINGFIELD RIOT, AUGUST, 10908 


The tension of racial feeling which prepared the atmosphere for the 
outbreak at Springfield, Illinois, August 14-15, 1908, was occasioned 
by the murder, several weeks earlier, of C. A. Ballard, a white man, by 
Joe James, a Negro tramp. One night the Negro James entered the 
room of Mr. Ballard’s daughter. Ballard attacked the Negro and in 
the struggle received a mortal wound. The Negro fled, but was found 
next day asleep in a nearby park under the influence of a drug. He 
was tried and hanged. The feeling over the James affair had hardly 
abated when the people were aroused by a second report of a Negro 
outrage upon a white woman. The wife of a street-car conductor de- 
clared that on Friday night, August 14, a Negro entered her room, 
dragged her from her bed to the back yard, and there assaulted her. 
She said she had attempted to scream but was choked by her assailant, 
who left her lying unconscious in the garden. Next morning she ac- 
cused as her assailant a Negro, George Richardson, who had been at 
work on a neighboring yard the day before the assault. In the after- 
noon, crowds of 300 or 400 gathered at the jail where Richardson had 
been incarcerated, and where the Negro James, who had killed Ballard, 
also occupied a cell. About five o’clock Richardson and James were 
clandestinely transferred to Bloomington. 

After dark the crowd began to demand the two Negroes. After 
being informed of their removal, some one started the rumor that 
Harry Loper, a restaurant keeper, had provided the automobile for the 
Negroes’ escape. The crowd rushed to the restaurant. In response to 
the mob’s hootings, Loper appeared at the door with a firearm in his 
hand. Brickbats began to fly at the plate-glass window, and in a few 
minutes the restaurant was a complete wreck, as was Loper’s automo- 
bile, which had been standing in front of it. 

*Tbid., p. 54. 

* Ibid., p. 55. 


50 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“When the mob began to surge through the town, the Fire Depart- 
ment was called to disperse it, but the mob cut the hose. Control 
having been lost by the sheriff and police, Governor Deneen called out 
the militia. The mob, by this time very much excited, started for the 
Negro district through Washington Street, along which a large num- 
ber of Negroes lived on upper floors. Raiding second-hand stores 
which belonged to white men, the mob secured guns, axes, and other 
weapons with which it destroyed places of business operated by Negroes 
and drove out all of the Negro residents from Washington Street. 
Then it turned north into Ninth Street. 

“At the northeast corner of “Ninth and Jefferson Streets was the 
frame barber shop of Scott Burton, a Negro. The mob set fire to this 
building,’ and lynched the proprietor, in the yard back of his shop. 
“The mob tied a rope around his neck and dragged him through the 
streets. An effort was then made to burn the body, which had been hung 
up to a tree.” The mob next turned north to Madison Street and began 
firing all the shacks in which Negroes and whites lived in that street. 

About two o’clock in the morning a company of militia arrived from 
Decatur, and, by firing into the mob and wounding two of the men, dis- 
persed it for the time being. 

The next night, however, in spite of the arrival of more militia, the 
mob gathered at the Court House Square, and proceeded to parade the 
streets. At the corner of Spring and Edwards Streets, a Negro named 
Denegan, 84 years old, whose offense was that he had been living with a 
white wife for thirty years, was strung up to a tree across the street. 
The Negroes became frightened, and began to leave the town, scores 
being severely beaten before making their escape. Three thousand of 
them were concentrated at Camp Lincoln. Before the rioting ended, 
5,000 militiamen were patrolling the streets. The fatalities of the riot 
were two Negroes lynched and four white men shot, and seventy-nine 
persons injured. 

When the grand jury took up the question of the assault of the 
Negro Richardson upon the wife of the street-car conductor, the fact 
was brought out that on the night of the alleged assault the white 
woman had been brutally beaten by a white man, and that, wishing to 
keep the name of the assailant a secret, she made up the story of as- 
sault by the Negro Richardson. Confronted with the facts, the woman 
signed an affidavit exonerating Richardson, who was a man of a fam- 
ily and property, with no criminal record.® 

° Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, pp. 67-71. 


FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 57 


THE WAUKEGAN RIOT, MAY, 1917 


May 31, 1917, at Waukegan, Illinois, thirty-six miles north of Chi- 
cago, a small riot grew out of the act of a Negro boy ten years old, and 
his sister, in throwing stones at passing automobiles. One of these 
missiles broke the windshield of an automobile driven by Lieutenant 
Blazier of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. Later in the day a 
mob of recruits from the station assembled in front of the house where 
the offending Negro boy lived, threw stones at it, and broke nearly all 
the windows. The provost guards rounded up the recruits and sent 
them back to the station. Two nights later, 150 boys on leave from 
the station renewed the attack, colliding with the police, who shot and 
wounded two of them and made several arrests. The crowd of boys 
followed to the police station and demanded the release of their com- 
rades. The commander of the station arrived in time to prevent further 
trouble.’ 


THE ST. LOUIS RIOTS, MAY-JULY, 1917 


The race riots in East St. Louis, May 28 and July 2, 1917, had a 
common origin in the competition between Negro and white labor in 
the industries of that city. The general shortage of labor during the 
World War caused the industries of East St. Louis to employ a large 
number of Negro immigrants from the South. During the two years 
prior to July, 1917, the Negro population of East St. Louis was in- 
creased by about 18,000. 

In the summer of 1916 there was a strike of 4,000 white men in the 
packing plants of the city, and the current opinion was that Negroes 
were used in these plants as strike breakers. About the same time a 
strike occurred at the Aluminum Ore Company during which the com- 
pany brought hundreds of Negroes to the city as strike breakers in 
order to defeat organized labor. This aroused intense hatred of the 
Negro. “White men walked the streets in idleness and their families 
suffered for food and warmth and clothes, while their places as laborers 
were taken by strange Negroes who were compelled to live in hovels 
and who were used to keep down wages.’ ® The secretary of the Cen- 
tral Trades Labor Union sent out a notice, May 2, calling for a meet- 
ing to present to the mayor and council a demand for action to “retard 
their growing menace (Negro immigrants) and also devise a way to 

‘ [bid., p. 57. 

®Tbid., p. 74. 


58 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


get rid of a certain portion of those who are already here,” declaring 
that the immigration of the Southern Negro had reached a point where 
“drastic action must be taken if we intend to work and live peaceably 
in this community,” and that the Negroes were being used “to the detri- 
ment of our white citizens by some of the capitalists and a few real 
estate owners.” ® 

The meeting was held May 28, in the City Hall, and a low-type law- 
yer made an inflammatory speech. That night, following the meeting, 
a white mob gathered at the police station and clamored for Negro 
prisoners. “A rumor circulated through the crowd that a white man 
had just been killed by Negroes, and parts of the crowd left, forming a 
mob which severely beat a number of Negroes whom it met. The situa- 
tion was so serious that the mayor called for troops.’ *° 

A second riot of larger proportions began on the night of July 1, 
1917. The hoodlums of both races had been menacing and attacking 
each other since the riot of May 28. In order to understand how favor- 
able to an explosion the atmosphere was, it is necessary to bear in mind 
that East St. Louis was a plague spot harboring within its borders 
“every offense in the calendar of crime.” *! The centers of vice 
were in two settlements; one known as “Black Valley” and the other 
“Brooklyn,” in both of which were the lowest dens of iniquity fre- 
quented by both whites and blacks. On the night above mentioned, a 
crowd of white roughs drove in an automobile through the “Black Val- 
ley,” firing indiscriminately into Negro homes. “This aroused fierce 
resentment among the Negroes, who organized for defense and armed 
themselves with guns. The ringing of the church bell, a prearranged 
signal for assembling, drew a crowd of them, and they marched 
through the streets ready to avenge the attack. A second automobile 
filled with white men crossed their path. The Negroes cursed them, 
commanded them to drive on, and fired a volley into the machine. The 
occupants, however, were not the rioters but policemen and reporters. 
One policeman was killed and another was so seriously wounded that 
he died later. 

“Thousands viewed the riddled car standing before police headquar- 
ters. The next morning, July 2, the crowds of whites and Negroes re- 
solved themselves into mobs and began a pitched battle. Negro mobs 
shot white men, and white men and boys, girls and women, began to 

® Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 75. 


® [bid., p. 75. 
" Tbhid., p. 76. 


FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 59 
attack every Negro in sight. News spread rapidly and, as excitement 
increased, unimaginable depredations and horrible tortures were com- 
mitted and viewed with ‘placid unconcern’ by hundreds. Negro men 
were stabbed and hanged from telephone poles. Their homes were 
burned.” 7? In the Negro area there were 312 houses totally or partially 
destroyed.4* “Women and children were not spared. An instance is 
given of a Negro child two years old which was shot and thrown into 
the doorway of a burning building.”’ 4 

About thirty-nine Negroes and eight white people were killed +> and 
hundreds of both races more or less seriously injured, and the property 
loss was about $393,600."° 

Five companies of militia were sent to the scene of the riot, some 
of them arriving on the morning of July 2, but both the militia and local 
police seemed to sympathize with the white mob and made no serious 
effort to restrain them.’ 

About 200 people were arrested for participation in the riot and of 
these, eleven Negroes and ten white men were convicted and sent to 
state prisons, fourteen white men were given jail sentences, and twenty- 
seven white men pleaded guilty to rioting and were fined.*® 


THEVABYSSINIAN RIOT OF CHICAGO) JUNE 1920 


In Chicago, June 10, 1920, there occurred what was called the Abys- 
sinian Riot. “Dr. R. D. Jonas, a white man, and Grover C. Ridding, a 
Negro claiming to be a native of Abyssinia, had drawn a number of 
Negroes into an organization having for its purpose the renunciation 
of the title Negro and the return of black people to their ‘motherland 
of Ethiopia.’ Promises of attractive jobs in Abyssinia were held out 
to those who would join the organization. Sunday afternoon the mem- 
bers of this order paraded the streets, and, stopping in front of a café 
on East Fifty-fifth street, and by way of symbolizing their renuncia- 
tion of the United States, began to burn the national flag. They bran- 
dished revolvers and made threats at two policemen who tried to inter- 
fere. A third policeman who came to the rescue was shot and wounded. 
A sailor from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, who also pro- 

aulbid) pii77: 

* Ibid., p. 73. 

* Thid., p. 77. 

i. . Dowv72. 

* Ibid., p. 73. 

Shido pi77. 

PDUn DAT es 


60 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





tested against the burning of the flag, was also shot and staggered into 
a cigar store. Some of the parade leaders got rifles from a nearby 
automobile and fired into the cigar store, killing one of the clerks. Sev- 
eral other persons were injured. The ring leaders of the shooting were 
arrested.?® 


THE BARRETT RIOT, CHICAGO, SEPTEMBER, 1920 


On September 20, 1920, a riot grew out of the murder of a white 
man, Thomas J. Barrett, by a Negro at the corner of Halsted and 
Forty-seventh Streets. Barrett met three Negroes at a news stand. An 
altercation led to a fracas in which Barrett was fatally stabbed, his head 
being almost severed from his body. A crowd of whites pursued the 
Negroes, who took refuge in a Catholic church, just off Lowe Avenue. 
Soon the crowd in front of the church had grown to 3,000 or 4,000. 
The three Negroes were taken in hand by the police and led through a 
back door to a patrol wagon in which they were whisked to the Hyde 
Park station.?° 


THE |GREAT (CHIGAGO RIODIOL itot9 


“Tt was four o’clock Sunday afternoon, July 27, when Eugene Wil- 
liams, seventeen-year-old Negro boy, was swimming offshore at the 
foot of Twenty-ninth Street. This beach was not one of those pub- 
licly maintained and supervised for bathing, but it was much used. AI- 
though it flanks an area thickly inhabited by Negroes, it was used by 
both races, access being had by crossing the railway tracks which skirt 
the lake shore. The part near Twenty-seventh Street had by tacit un- 
derstanding come to be considered as reserved for Negroes, while the 
whites used the part near Twenty-ninth Street. Walking is not easy 
along the shore, and each race had kept pretty much to its own part, 
observing, moreover, an imaginary boundary extending into the water. 

‘Williams, who had entered the water at the part used by Negroes, 
swam and drifted south into the part used by the whites. Immedi- 
ately before his appearance there, white men, women, and children had 
been bathing in the vicinity and were on the beach in considerable num- 
bers. Four Negroes walked through the group and into the water. 
White men summarily ordered them off. The Negroes left, and the 
white people resumed their sport. But it was not long before the 
Negroes were back, coming from the north with others of their own 


* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 59. 
™ Ibid., p. 65. 


FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 61 


race. Then began a series of attacks and retreats, counterattacks, and 
stone-throwing. Women and children who could not escape hid be- 
hind debris and rocks. The stone-throwing continued, first one side 
gaining the advantage, then the other. 

“Williams, who had remained in the water during the fracas, found 
a railroad tie and clung to it, stones meanwhile frequently striking 
the water near him. A white boy of about the same age swam toward 
him. As the white boy neared, Williams let go of the tie, took a 
few strokes, and went down. The coroner’s jury rendered a verdict 
that he had drowned because fear of stone-throwing kept him 
from shore. His body showed no stone bruises, but rumor had it 
that he had actually been hit by one of the stones and drowned as a 
result. 

“On shore guilt was immediately placed upon a certain white man 
by several Negro witnesses who demanded that he be arrested by a 
white policeman who was on the spot. No arrest was made. 

“The tragedy was sensed by the battling crowd and, awed by it, they 
gathered on the beach. For an hour both whites and Negroes dived for 
the boy without results. Awe gave way to excited whispers. ‘They’ said 
he was stoned to death. The report circulated through the crowd that 
the police officer had refused to arrest the murderer. The Negroes in 
the crowd began to mass dangerously. At this crucial point the accused 
policeman arrested a Negro on a white man’s complaint. Negroes 
mobbed the white officer and the riot was under way. 

- “One version of the quarrel which resulted in the drowning of Wil- 
liams was given by the state’s attorney, who declared that it arose 
among white and Negro gamblers over a craps game on the shore, ‘vir- 
tually under the protection of the police officer on the beat.’ Eye wit- 
nesses to the stone-throwing clash, appearing before the coroner’s jury, 
saw no gambling, but said it might have been going on, but if so, was 
not visible from the water’s edge. The crowd undoubtedly included, as 
the grand jury declared, ‘hoodlums, gamblers, and thugs,’ but it also 
included law-abiding citizens, white and Negro. 

“This charge, that the first riot clash started among gamblers who 
were under the protection of the police officer, and also the charge that 
the policeman refused to arrest the stone-thrower were vigorously 
denied by the police. The policeman’s star was taken from him, but, 
after a hearing before the Civil Service Commission, it was returned, 
thus officially vindicating him. 

“The two facts, the drowning and the refusal to arrest, or widely 


62 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


circulated reports of such refusal, must be considered together as mark- 
ing the inception of the riot. Testimony of a captain of police shows 
that first reports from the lake after the drowning indicated that the 
situation was calming down. White men had shown a not altogether 
hostile feeling for the Negroes by assisting in diving for the body of 
the boy. Furthermore a clash started on this isolated spot could not be 
augmented by outsiders rushing in. There was every possibility that 
the clash, without the further stimulus of reports of the policeman’s 
conduct, would have quieted down. 

“Chronological Story of the Riot—After the drowning of Williams, 
it was two hours before any further~fatalities occurred. Reports of the 
drowning and of the alleged conduct of the policeman spread out into 
the neighborhood. The Negro crowd from the beach gathered at the 
foot of Twenty-ninth Street. As it became more and more excited, a 
group of officers was called by the policeman who had been at the beach. 
James Crawford, a Negro, fired into the group of officers and was 
himself shot and killed by a Negro policeman who had been sent to help 
restore order. 

“During the remainder of the afternoon of July 27, many distorted 
rumors circulated swiftly throughout the South Side. The Negro 
crowd from Twenty-ninth Street got into action, and white men who 
came in contact with it were beaten. In all, four white men were 
beaten, five were stabbed, and one was shot. As the rumors spread, 
new crowds gathered, mobs sprang into activity spontaneously, and 
gangs began to take part in the lawlessness. 

“Farther to the west, as darkness came on, white gangsters became 
active. Negroes in white districts suffered severely at their hands. 
From 9:00 p. m. until 3:00 a. m. twenty-seven Negroes were beaten, 
seven were stabbed, and four were shot. 

“Few clashes occurred on Monday morning. People of both races 
went to work and even continued to work side by side, as customary, 
without signs of violence. but as the afternoon wore on, white men 
and boys living between the Stock Yards and the “Black Belt’ sought 
malicious amusement in directing mob violence against Negro workers 
returning home. 

“Street-car routes, especially transfer points, were thronged with 
white people of all ages. Trolleys were pulled from wires and the cars 
brought under the control of mob leaders. Negro passengers were 
dragged to the street, beaten, and kicked. The police were apparently 
powerless to cope with these numerous assaults. Four Negro men and 


FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 63 


one white assailant were killed, and thirty Negro men were severely 
beaten in the street-car clashes. 

“The ‘Black Belt’ contributed its share of violence to the record of 
Monday afternoon and night. Rumors of white depredations and kill- 
ings were current among the Negroes and led to acts of retaliation. An 
aged Italian peddler, one Lazzeroni, was set upon by young Negro boys 
and stabbed to death. Eugene Temple, white laundryman, was stabbed 
to death and robbed by three Negroes. 

“A Negro mob made a demonstration outside Provident Hospital, an 
institution conducted by Negroes, because two injured whites who had 
been shooting right and left from a hurrying automobile on State Street 
were taken there. Other mobs stabbed six white men, shot five others, 
severely beat nine more, and killed two in addition to those named 
above. 

“Rumor had it that a white occupant of the Angelus apartment 
house had shot a Negro boy from a fourth-story window. Negroes be- 
sieged the building. The white tenants sought police protection, and 
about 100 policemen, including some mounted men, responded. The 
mob of about 1,500 Negroes demanded the ‘culprit,’ but the police failed 
to find him after a search of the building. A flying brick hit a police- 
man. There was a quick massing of the police, and a volley was fired 
into the Negro mob. Four Negroes were killed and many were injured. 
It is believed that had the Negroes not lost faith in the white police 
force it is hardly likely that the Angelus riot would have occurred. 

“At this point, Monday night, both whites and Negroes showed 
signs of panic. Each race grouped by itself. Small mobs began sys- 
tematically in various neighborhoods to terrorize and kill. Gangs in 
the white districts grew bolder, finally taking the offensive in raids 
through territory ‘invaded’ by Negro home seekers. Boys between six- 
teen and twenty-two banded together to enjoy the excitement of the 
chase. 

“Automobile raids were added to the rioting Monday night. Cars 
from which rifle and revolver shots were fired were driven at 
great speed through sections inhabited by Negroes. Negroes defended 
themselves by ‘sniping’ and volley-firing from ambush and barricade. 
So great was the fear of these raiding parties that the Negroes distrusted 
all motor vehicles and frequently opened fire on them without waiting 
to learn the intent of the occupants. This type of warfare was kept 
up spasmodically all Tuesday and was resumed with vigor Tuesday 
night. 


64 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“At midnight, Monday, street-car clashes ended by reason of a gen- 
eral strike on the surface and elevated lines. The street-railway tie-up 
was complete for the remainder of the week. But on Tuesday morn- 
ing this was a new source of terror for those who tried to walk to their 
places of employment. Men were killed en route to their work through 
hostile territory. Idle men congregated on the streets and gang-rioting 
increased. A white gang of soldiers and sailors in uniform, augmented 
by civilians, raided the ‘Loop,’ or downtown section of Chicago, early 
Tuesday, killing two Negroes and beating and robbing several others. 
In the course of these activities they wantonly destroyed property of 
white business men. f 

“Gangs sprang up as far south as Sixty-third Street in Englewood 
and in the section west of Wentworth Avenue near Forty-seventh 
Street. Premeditated depredations were the order of the night. 
Many Negro homes in mixed districts were attacked, and several of 
them were burned. Furniture was stolen or destroyed. When raiders 
were driven off they would return again and again until their designs 
were accomplished. 

“The contagion of the race war broke over the boundaries of the 
South Side and spread to the Italians on the West Side. This com- 
munity became excited over a rumor, and an Italian crowd killed 
a Negro, Joseph Lovings. 

“Wednesday saw a material lessening of crime and violence. The 
‘Black Belt’ and the district immediately west of it were still storm cen- 
ters. But the peak of the rioting had apparently passed, although the 
danger of fresh outbreaks of magnitude was still imminent. Although 
companies of the militia had been mobilized in nearby armories as early 
as Monday night, July 28, it was not until Wednesday evening at 10:30 
that the Mayor yielded to pressure and asked for their help. 

“Rain on Wednesday night and Thursday drove idle people of both 
races into their homes. The temperature fell, and with it the white 
heat of the riot. From this time on the violence was sporadic, scattered, 
and meager. The riot seemed well under control, if not actually ended. 

“Friday witnessed only a single reported injury. At 3:35 a. m. 
Saturday, incendiary fires burned forty-nine houses in the immigrant 
neighborhood west of the Stock Yards. Nine hundred and forty-eight 
people, mostly Lithuanians, were made homeless, and the property loss 
was about $250,000. Responsibility for these fires was never fixed. 
The riot virtually ceased on Saturday. For the next few days injured 
individuals were reported occasionally, and by August 8 the riot zone 


FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES 65 


had settled down to normal and the militia was withdrawn.” ** The 
casualty list of the riot included thirty-eight persons killed, 537 in- 
jured, and about 1,000 rendered homeless and destitute. Nine people 
were indicted for participating in the riot, and of these five were con- 
victed, three Negroes and two whites.?? 


* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, pp. 4-7. 
™TIbid., p. 48. 


CHAPTER 9 
EDUCATIONAL STATUS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 


Problem of Avoiding Race Friction in the Elementary Schools—Social Separation 
of the Races in the High Schools—Lack of Elementary Education Adapted to 
the Negro’s Needs—Negroes in Northern and Western Universities 


LL the states of the North, and also those of the West except as 

to a few localities, have abolished separate primary schools for the 
Negroes. In some cities of the West the Negroes have favored a re- 
turn to the separate schools,’ and in two cities, Cincinnati, Ohio, and 
Gary, Indiana, separate schools have been established. One of the 
arguments for the separate schools was that a larger number of positions 
would be open to Negro teachers. The Negro press, however, bitterly 
denounces separate schools as an odious form of “jim-crowism.” 

The dual system of schools, which prevailed in the North and West 
before the Civil War, was found to be impracticable in view of the 
small Negro population and the difficulty of maintaining the Negro 
schools on an efficient basis. The mixed schools at first created indig- 
nation among some white parents. In Ohio, for example, in order to 
keep Negro children out of the schools, the farmers drove away the 
Negro tenants.? At the present time one rarely hears of opposition to 
the mixed schools, and no serious evil consequences seem to have fol- 
lowed their introduction. The schools have proved to be unobjection- 
able chiefly because the number of them which have Negro pupils is 
very small and because in schools attended by Negroes there is no en- 
forced or necessary social intermingling of the races. At the recess 
periods white and colored children play together or in separate groups 
as they may choose.* In a number of mixed schools in Chicago the 
children of both races play together during school hours, but in the 
afternoons and evenings the ground is occupied exclusively by one 
race or the other.t In the kindergartens of Chicago white children 


* Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 228. 
*Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio, p. 94. 
* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 249. 
*Tbid., p. 274. 
66 


EDUCATIONAL STATUS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 67 
sometimes object to holding the hands of Negro children,’ and in 
the grade schools white mothers sometimes object to their children 
marching in the graduation exercises with Negro children.® 

The city schools are generally located with reference to diminishing 
as far as possible the contact of the two races, and, as a means of 
avoiding friction, the whites and blacks are sometimes transferred from 
one school to another. In Lincoln district, Chicago, which is a Negro 
center, white children are transferred to other schools, and the Negro 
children residing outside but nearby are urged to attend the Lincoln 
School.’ 

In cities with a large Negro population there are Negro teachers, 
and, while they are usually assigned to schools in the Negro quarter, 
they also in some instances teach in schools in which the pupils are 
predominantly white. In the Negro quarter of Harlem, New York, 
two of the schools have all colored teachers; one other of the schools 
has fourteen colored teachers out of a total of sixty-one. 

The admission of Negroes to the elementary schools in the North 
and West represents a rational adjustment to existing conditions, and, 
if the same conditions as to number and distribution of the Negro pre- 
vailed in the South, mixed schools would exist in the South to the 
same extent that they now exist in the North and West. 

Among the high schools of the North, as among the elementary 
schools, there are relatively few which have any Negro pupils, and, 
where both races attend them, the proportion of Negro pupils is much 
less than in the mixed elementary schools. The degree of harmony be- 
tween the races in the high schools depends largely upon the relative 
proportion of Negro pupils. Where the Negro pupils are few in num- 
ber there appears to be very slight friction, but where they nearly equal 
the whites the friction sometimes kindles into violence. 

In regard to social contact of the pupils, the Chicago Commission 
on Race Relations says: 

“In high schools, with their older pupils, there is an increased race 
consciousness, and in the purely social activities such as clubs and 
dances, which are part of high-school life, there is none of the general 
mingling often found in semi-social relations such as singing and lit- 
erary societies.” ® 
 *Tbid., p. 246. 

* Tbid., p. 250. 

"Thid., p. 235. 

*Tbid., p. 254. 


68 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





The white principals and teachers generally try to allay race preju- 
dice and make the Negro and white children work together harmoni- 
ously. In some cases the principals are ardent believers in social equal- 
ity and hope to bring it about through the influence of the school.° 

In regard to the value of elementary and high school education for 
the Negroes, there are reasons for doubting whether the curriculum de- 
signed primarily for the whites is meeting the needs of the colored 
people. The vocational instruction which is the main function of the 
high school relates to occupations not often entered by the Negroes. 
In mixed schools where Negroes are few, there will always be diffi- 
culty in offering occupational instruction of a kind which will fit the 
Negro for the work open to him. 

Even where there are separate schools for Negroes the difficulty 
of giving suitable vocational training is very great. As yet the Negro 
finds the door of opportunity open to him chiefly in the field of un- 
skilled labor, and special training for this field cannot be given in the 
schools; and if it could be given, the Negroes would not want it, for 
their pride leads them everywhere to prefer the kind of instruction 
given to the whites. A mere literary education may indeed be a source 
of satisfaction to the Negro, but, unless accompanied by something 
more practical, it is apt to leave him where it found him so far as 
making a living is concerned. 

In some cases the instruction imparted to Negroes is of no value 
because of the vicious environment in which the school is located. For 
example, in the Brooklyn High School of East St. Louis in 1917, 
“twenty-four out of twenty-five girls who were in the graduating class 
went to the bad in the saloons and dance halls and failed to receive 
their diplomas.” ?° 

In regard to the practical value of the Negro schools in Washington, 
D. C., William Archer says that the educational facilities “have been 
excellent for many years, on the whole as good as they were for whites, 
yet it does not seem to have had the effect of bettering their worldly 
positions ; few attained positions of trust and responsibility. It is true 
they were handicapped by their color in competition with whites, 
but there was a wide field for personal advancement and social useful- 
ness among their numerous kinsfolk. Professor Kelly Miller says on 
this point: ‘There is perhaps no place on earth where so much culture 


* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 255. 
* [bid., p. 76. 


EDUCATIONAL STATUS OF NORTHERN NEGROES — 69 


runs to seed, and so much intelligence goes to waste, as among the 
Negro element in our large cities.’ ”’ 1? 

Before the Civil War Northern Negroes rarely found admittance 
to any college except those founded especially for them. Lincoln Uni- 
versity in Pennsylvania, founded in 1854, and Wilberforce College in 
Ohio, founded in 1856, were the only Negro colleges north of the 
Mason and Dixon Line. At this time, in the Western states, there 
was considerable opposition to Negro colleges, not because the white 
people objected to Negro education, but because Negro immigration 
was not desired, and any kind of school for Negroes was thought to be 
a drawing card for Negro immigrants. Wilberforce College was ob- 
jected to for this reason, and in 1865 a mob gathered and burnt it to 
the ground. Oberlin College in Ohio took the lead among the Northern 
white colleges in opening its doors to Negro students. In 1865 about 
one-third of its students were of the Negro race, and it still has a 
larger number of Negro students than any other Northern college. As 
a considerable number of Negroes began to pass through the high 
schools, it became very evident that unless they were generally admitted 
to the state universities and endowed coileges, they would be denied 
the privilege of higher education. One by one other colleges opened 
their doors to Negro men and women, and now there is no Northern or 
Western institution of higher learning which openly debars them. 

Some Negroes are found in nearly every university in the North 
or West. They come up in numbers from the South where Negro col- 
leges are numerous but of low standards. Generally students from 
Atlanta University, Georgia, go to Harvard, those from the Atlanta 
Baptist College go to Chicago, and those from Talladega, to Yale. The 
number of Negro students in Northern and Western universities is 
about 500. The total number of Negro graduates in the United States 
is about 6,000. 

One almost never hears of trouble growing out of the intermin- 
gling of the races in the higher institutions of learning. On account 
of the very large student body in these institutions, no single student, 
outside of the classroom, can come into contact with more than a small 
number of his fellow students, and he is free to select his own circle. 
The Negroes and whites sit together, and if necessary work together 
in classrooms and laboratories, but in all social relationships they fol- 
low their natural bent in joining opposite circles. I have sat beside 

"Through Afro-America, p. 128. 


70 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Negroes in the University of Chicago, and have had them as my pupils 
in the University of Colorado, and in both instances my feeling to- 
wards them has been one of sympathy and admiration. 

The color question sometimes arises over the admission of Negroes 
in universities which have dormitories. For instance, several years 
ago a Negress from Texas engaged a room in Chapin Hall at North- 
western University, and upon her arrival a storm of protests arose 
from the girl students, and from the Women’s Educational Associ- 
ation, which has supervision of the several halls in which the girls live. 
The outcome was a decision by the authorities not to admit Negro 
women to any of the dormitories of the institution. 

In January, 1923, the color question came up in a similar way in 
connection with the application of Professor R. C. Bruce, a Negro, for 
accommodation for his son in the freshmen dormitories at Harvard 
University. In reply to the application, President Lowell wrote as 
follows: 

“T am sorry that you do not feel the reasonableness of our position 
about the freshmen dormitories. It is not a departure from the past 
to refuse to compel white and colored men to room in the same build- 
ing. We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for educa- 
tion that we do to the white man, but we do not owe to him to force 
him and the white into social relations that are not or may not be 
mutually congenial. 

“We would give him freely opportunities for room and board 
wherever it is voluntary; but it seems to me that for the colored man 
to claim that he is entitled to have the white man compelled to live with 
him is a very unfortunate innovation, which, far from doing him good, 
would increase a prejudice that, as you and I will thoroughly agree, 
is most unfortunate and probably growing. 

“On the other hand, to maintain that compulsory residence in the 
freshmen dormitories—which has proved a great benefit in breaking 
up the social cliques that did such injury to the college—should not be 
established for 99% per cent of the students because the remaining 
one-half of one per cent could not properly be included seems to me 
an untenable position.” 

The stand taken by President Lowell was severely criticized by the 
Negro press; also by a section of the white press, and by some of the 
Harvard alumni. The governing board then took up the matter, and, 
after deliberation, decided that, since Harvard up to this time had 
recognized no racial distinctions, it should abide by its traditional pol- 


EDUCATIONAL STATUS OF NORTHERN NEGROES — 71 


icy. President Lowell acquiesced. The announcement was made that 
the dormitories would be open to all freshmen alike. 

Some years before this incident, President Eliot of Harvard in- 
dicated his sympathy with the general policy of separate education in 
the South by remarking that if Negro students were in the majority 
at Harvard, or formed a large proportion of the total number, some 
separation of the races might follow.?? 

Whatever one may think of the advisability of admitting Negroes 
to the dormitories of Northern universities, every white citizen of the 
North should feel a pride in the fact that the door of opportunity is 
open to the Negro in all of the higher institutions of learning. There 
will never be a large enough proportion of Negroes at Harvard or any 
other Northern university to constitute a serious color problem. 

* Quoted by Baker, op. cit., p. 123. 


CHAPTER Io 
RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 


The Northern Negro Preacher in Politics—Negro Churches and Negro Member- 
ship in White Churches—Tribulations of the Negro Pastor—Character of 
Negro Preachers—Example of a Heroic Ministry 


NE of the most notable trends in the religious life of the Negroes 
following the Civil War was the entrance of the Negro preachers 
into politics. The enfranchisement of the Negroes in the North and 
West, as also in the South, made it necessary that the newly enfran- 
chised people have leaders who could organize and direct their political 
activities. The Negro preachers, being the only learned class and the nat- 
ural leaders of their race, were irresistibly drawn into the political arena. 
In all sections of the country they began to act as campaign managers, 
to make political speeches, to attend party conventions, and to hold 
public offices, both elective and appointive. 

Many Negro preachers from the North were tempted to migrate 
to the South in order to share in the opportunity for political leader- 
ship which was offered by the great mass of untutored and recently 
emancipated colored people. 

Among those who took advantage of this opportunity may be men- 
tioned, first, Dr. J. T. White, a Baptist minister from Indiana. In 1865 
he came to Arkansas, took charge of a Baptist church at Helena, and 
became a prominent political leader. He was a member of 
the Reconstitution convention of 1868, and afterward was 
twice elected a member of the lower house of the legisla- 
ture and once a member of the senate. He stumped the 
state in the interest of the Radical party, and was rewarded by 
appointment to several public offices... Another preacher, Jesse F. 
Boulder, left his Baptist charge in Brooklyn, Ilinois, in 1864, and, fol- 
lowing the wake of the Union army, settled in Natchez, Mississippi, 
and plunged into the political caldron. He campaigned over the state, 
attended conventions, and was elected a member of the lower house 


* Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, p. 225. 
rhe 


RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 73 


of the legislature. He was very influential in the election to the United 
States Senate of two Negroes, Hiram Revells and B. K. Bruce.’ 

Richard H. Cain, a minister of the African Methodist Church, came 
from New York to South Carolina, and, during the Reconstruction 
era in the latter state, edited a Radical paper, was a member of the 
constitutional convention, and later was a member of the state senate. 
After the Reconstruction period, he was twice elected to the United 
States Congress, first in 1879, and again in 1881.° 

Bishop James W. Hood, of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion 
Church, hailing from Connecticut, came to North Carolina as a mis- 
sionary during the Civil War, and, during the Reconstruction period, 
was the most aggressive and prominent leader of the Negro citizens. 
He was a member of the convention of 1867, and later was appointed 
justice of the peace, deputy collector of internal revenue, and assistant 
superintendent of public instruction. He served also in various ca- 
pacities under the Freedmen’s Bureau. As bureau agent he rendered 
valuable service in the establishment of Negro schools. He believed in 
social as well as civil equality, and opposed separate schools for his race. 

Bishop B. W. Arnett, of the African Methodist Church in Ohio, was 
active in the politics of his state, and in 1885 was elected to the Ohio 
legislature, in which he played a part in the repeal of the odious “Black 
Laws.” # 

In Northern cities, wherever there is a large Negro population, the 
Negroes by preference have their own churches. In towns where there 
are no Negro churches, the colored people are admitted to membership 
in the white churches. Even in the cities well supplied with Negro 
churches, there are some Negro members of white churches. A few 
Negro members are found in the Catholic churches, and more in the 
Episcopal. In the latter denomination there are seldom enough Negro 
adherents to justify a separate church, but sometimes the number 
is large enough to be a source of embarrassment to the whites. A 
prominent leader in an Episcopal church in Boston is quoted as 
saying : 

“What shall we do with these Negroes! I for one would like to 
have them stay. I believe it is in accordance with the doctrine of 
Christ, but the proportion is growing so large that white people are 
drifting away from us. Strangers avoid us. Our organization is ex- 

* Woodson, op. cit., p. 228. 

*Tbid., p. 234. 

“Tbid., p. 236. 


74 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


pensive to keep up, and the Negroes are able to contribute very little 
in proportion to their numbers.” ° 

In the city of Boston, with the increase of the Negro population and 
the growth of community of interest, there has been a tendency for the 
Negroes to form churches of their own. At the present time, only 
five or six churches in the city have a Negro attendance of consider- 
able proportions. The churches which have the largest Negro mem- 
bership are the Roman Catholic and the Episcopal. The former claim 
a Negro membership of about 1,000. “In 1903, at the request of the 
Negroes themselves, the experiment was begun of holding at the Cathe- 
dral some separate masses.”’* In 1907 another departure was under- 
taken, which has proved more successful and which consisted in hold- 
ing certain separate masses in a church set aside for the use of the 
Negroes. This departure, however, does not exclude the Negroes from 
attending the general services elsewhere.® 

The Episcopal churches of Boston have altogether about 1,500 Negro 
members, of whom about half belong to the Mission of the Society 
of St. John the Evangelist, located on Lenox Street in the heart of the 
Negro district. The mission is under the control of the English church. 

In some of the Episcopal churches the Negro attendance has been 
large enough to give rise to serious friction. Trouble over the effort 
to form separate classes for the Negro and white children in St. Peter’s 
Church, Cambridge, in 1908, led to a request of the Negro members 
that they have a church by themselves. “No objection being made by 
the whites, St. Bartholomew’s Church, previously a mission, was turned 
over to them. .. . Only a few Negroes still continue to be members 
of the parent body.” ° 

“Because of this prevailingly inhospitable attitude towards the Ne- 

groes, on the one hand, and . . . that the independent Negro churches 
are gradually getting a stronger hold on the race, the general tendency 
at present is toward a distinct decrease in Negro attendance at white 
churches.” ?° 

There are practical difficulties in the way of any large number of 
Negroes and whites occupying the same building, as illustrated in the 


* Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 121. 
* Daniels, In Freedom’s Birthplace, p. 226. 
" Ibid., p. 220. 

® Tbid,, p. 220. 

niDId.. Ds7235. 

” Ibid., p. 237. 


RELIGIOUS ‘ASPECTS OF. NORTHERN NEGROES 75 


case of a Philadelphia minister who called at a social settlement in 
the Negro slums, and volunteered to organize a Sunday school for the 
colored youth. He asked the woman superintendent of the settlement. 
where he could hold the school. 

“Why not in your church in the afternoon?” she replied. 

“Why, we couldn’t do that!” he exclaimed. “We would have to air 
all the cushions afterward.” ™ 

The Negro churches in the North are not social centers to the same 
extent as Negro churches in the South, for the reason that, in the 
North, there are many places other than the church which compete 
for the Negro’s leisure time. Nevertheless, some Negro churches make 
an effort to provide social and recreational activities for their members. 
For example, the Olivet Baptist Church of Chicago, with a member- 
ship of 9,069, maintains a kindergarten, day nursery, athletic teams, 
literary societies, and also an employment department.’? The Negro 
Congregational Church of Springfield, Massachusetts, maintains an 
employment bureau, a woman’s welfare league, night schools for do- 
mestic training, handicrafts, and music. 

The pastorate of a Negro church is often full of trials and tribula- 
tions. The Rev. James D. Corrothers, writing of his experience as 
pastor of a Negro church in Hackensack, New Jersey, says: 

“In those days it was the ‘jumping-off place’ for coloured Meth- 
odist ministers. For years none had been able to succeed there. A 
number had given up, and had quit the denomination and the ministry 
after having been appointed there. The church and parsonage were 
dilapidated ; and the congregation, numbering less than thirty, was al- 
most at its last extremity, after having staggered for years under the 
burden of a $1200.00 debt, upon which it was paying compound in- 
terest. In addition to this principal debt, there were a number of 
troublesome, though smaller, ‘floating debts.’ The pastor who had 
preceded me in that field died as I stood by his bedside, soon after I 
took up the work. The church’s credit was not good for a pound of 
nails. Its roof leaked; its windows were out; and the parsonage was 
almost an uninhabitable ruin. Boards, barrel-staves and the bottoms 
of old tin boilers had been used to patch the roof. During a rain storm, 
the water ran in rivulets down the inside of its walls, and stood in 
puddles about the floor. 

“During the year which I spent as pastor in Hackensack, the par- 


™ Baker, op. cit., p. 122. 
™ Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 143. 


76 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


sonage was thoroughly overhauled and repaired; all outstanding ‘float- 
ing debts’ were cancelled; and the interest on the main debt was paid 
up, and the time extended. The church was repaired and beautified ; 
gas lights were installed, and the church’s credit redeemed. And the 
congregation had so increased that a gallery had to be built for its 
accommodation. The people seemed to have imbibed a new life. Every 
improvement was promptly paid for. I exchanged pulpits, at times, 
with the white ministers of the town; and the local daily paper did me 
the honour to mentign my work several times on its editorial page. At 
this time I kept house with my little son, Willard, in the parsonage. 
I was contributing frequently to* the magazines; and it was during 
this busy period that my book, ‘The Black Cat Club,’ was published 
by a New York firm. 

“To make possible the work which was accomplished for the par- 
ish in Hackensack, I did not press the struggling church for my salary. 
They had promised me $350.00 a year. Only a little more than half 
of this amount was ever received. I was obliged to fall back upon the 
money which I had saved up toward my trip abroad, together with my 
small earnings as a magazine writer. I contributed as much cash as 
any one member toward the improvements and upkeep of the church, 
and had to dress and live in a manner in keeping with the dignity of 
my calling. It was not long before my bank account stood pretty 
close to zero. But the church had received a permanent impetus for 
good; and I felt satisfied in the thought of reasonable certainty that 
something worth while awaited me, after resurrecting such a corpse 
as the Hackensack church had been. Other and better parishes were 
calling for me. But it was at that time that the black tragedy of my 
life fell upon me; and I staggered and groaned, like a bludgeoned 
traveller in the dark. I was bewildered, dazed, and well-nigh helpless. 
I was a stranger and far from home, and nearly penniless. I had 
sacrificed all to do good, when, suddenly, I was accused of plotting to 
ruin my bishop’s good name—a thing of which I was as innocent as 
Heaven itself! I had far other and more profitable things to think 
about. I should have had nothing to gain, but everything to lose by 
such a course. Besides, I had no such wicked thing in my heart. I 
had never dreamed of hurting any man in that way. I had helped 
many men up, but had never torn one down. The whole record of my 
life cried out against such an accusation. But I had not lived long in 
the East, and the trend of my life was not known. 

“Legal proceedings were taken against me by my bishop, and the 


RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 77 


matter was speedily brought into court. I had now no money with 
which to fight for my name or liberty; but I told the simple truth, and 
was quickly acquitted in open court. But ecclesiastical prosecution 
followed; a prosecution which meant that the machinery and influence 
of a great Negro church organisation, numbering hundreds of thousands 
of communicants, was to be set in motion against one man. It meant 
for me that the most merciless and undeserved ill fortune of my life 
was at hand; it meant that there would be marshaled against me an 
overwhelming cavalcade to teach me sorrow and suffering; and that no 
man of my race who was in any sense connected with, or influenced 
by, a great church, might safely give me bread or sympathy, lest he 
incur the displeasure of ‘bigger’ Negro men, and perhaps lose a part 
of his own bread. It meant that all doors of hope would be closed 
to me. 

“Can you, O Friend unseen, Friend of the untrammelled way who 
know not the withering hell through which I have come, can you imag- 
ine the black meaning of my situation? Ah, how can you understand? 
—you who could demand justice! You do not know the perfidy, the 
black tragedies which sometimes befall worthy men in the Negro race— 
butchered because they ‘know too much,’ or will not be brow-beaten, 
discredited and done to death, as it were, by their own, with impunity, 
while the dark mass about them looks on in frightened, stupefied si- 
lence. And the white man, hearing only one side of the matter, yawns! 
He has been deceived into believing that righteousness has been done! 

“Few Negroes in America are beyond the influence of the church. 
No other Negro institution is one half so influential; so powerful. 
All Negro life in America centres about the church. Coloured profes- 
sional and business men, as a class, find it wise and profitable to remain 
in the good graces of the church. Even successful race leaders, like 
Dunbar, Douglass and Booker T. Washington have not disdained a 
hearing through the Negro Church. To a Negro minister the church 
means his bread; and the loss of his caste means perpetual disgrace. 
To be excommunicated from his church is, to him, like being given a 
sentence of slow death—of ignominiously crushing and bitter slow 
death. He becomes a living dead man among his people—a thing lep- 
rous, accursed and unforgivable! All this I was now to be—I who 
had worked for the glory of the church; and sacrificed! I was to be 
made a thing to be shunned !—a social and ecclesiastical outlaw! 

“The shadows moved on. All life seemed blackened. I was almost 
crazed with grief. My hair was turning white. The shadows over- 


78 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


whelmed me. I seemed suddenly to be moving in a topsy-turvy world 
where all things went awry. I knew I was hurt; but did not realise 
how much. Like a dazed man, I groped among pitchy rocks and shad- 
ows, and shuddered beside murmurous rivers of pitch, mocked darkly, 
as by some sudden, guffawing bacchanalia from hell. No strength of 
my own arm could save me now! I thought of the Victim-Conqueror 
of Calvary whose gospel I had preached, whom I had so imperfectly 
served. And I cried for help unto Him who had said: ‘Ye believe 
in God; believe also in Me. Let not your heart be troubled; neither 
let it be afraid. J will not leave you comfortless. . .. When thou 
goest through the deep waters, I’ will be with thee; and through the 
rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the 
fire, thou shalt not be burned. . . . My presence shall go with thee, and 
I shall give thee rest.’ 

“The shadows grew black. I was soon without a parish, without 
money or a home; and every pleasant prospect was blasted. Even my 
literary work paled. I had to begin life all over again. Many unkind 
things were done to me, and many false and hurtful stories printed or 
told. Having no money, it was well-nigh impossible for me to get 
these matters corrected. Colored newspapers, as a rule, are in the 
business for money; and, in the absence of personal motives, will print 
nothing either good or bad about one, unless the editor’s palm is 
crossed. My inability to do this compelled me to suffer under much 
misrepresentation which hindered me at every turn. 

“But, I was resolved upon these things: 

1. I would not slander the bishop. I felt that, perhaps, to some 
extent, he had been misled by designing, jealous men. 

2. I would not strike back. That would be a waste of the energy 
needed to fight my own way up again. 

3. I could still do good. The riches, the unspeakable pleasure of 
doing kind deeds would be vouchsafed to me still, I knew, as long as 
being was granted unto me. 

4. I should not degenerate into bad habits. However dark the 
present or sad the future, there was no help nor solace, I knew, in evil 
ways. 

5. JI should keep trying. ‘No man,’ I thought, ‘is “dead” until he 
is dead. J will try! 

“T had health and liberty left; no more. But these were enough. 
I took my little, motherless boy by the hand, one sunset, and passed 
out into the night, away from the scene of our sorrow and sacrifice. 


RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 7 


\O 


| 


God’s stars were over us; but we had no other house nor home. We 
were wanderers now. The roof which I had built on the little manse 
sheltered others who had not toiled for it; and who, without cause, 
would have laughed at beholding us. Tears blinded me. My heart, 
my whole body ached. But I could not believe that God had thrown 
me away. In my clasp was a little hand; and, under the stars, a little, 
upturned face; and up to my heart fluttered a little voice: 

‘My papa; my o-w-n, dear papa!’ it said.” 1° 

The Rev. Mr. Corrothers remarks of his church members in Bos- 
ton: “I was glad to resign, and get away from among them, where 
pastoring among coloured Baptists, at least, is one long nightmare of 
fuss-dodging.”’ 4 

Among the ministers of the 147 Negro churches of Chicago, there 
are only twenty-two who have had special training. Six of these are 
graduates of recognized Northern institutions, while fourteen are grad- 
uates of Negro institutions, such as Lincoln University, Howard Uni- 
versity, Virginia Union University, and others. Some of them have 
not had a grammar-school education.*® 

Many Negro clergymen seem to be of a low moral type. The Rev. 
Mr. Corrothers gives the following account of his dealings with some 
of them: 

“T was not given an appointment by the Methodist conference, but 
was ordered to transfer to their New York Conference, where I would 
be given a church. This would take me nearly a thousand miles from 
home, and place me among strangers, at the mercy of the bishop and 
conference. I was expected to make the trip, of course, entirely at 
my own expense, and risk getting something worth while, giving up my 
newspaper work and whatever prospects I had, and becoming plastic 
dough in their hands. But I had seen so much of the inner workings 
of things that I was heartily sick of it all. I had seen ministers who 
were suspected of intimacy with a brother minister’s wife sit upon 
the wronged husband’s case, and expel him because he would not con- 
sent to live with the woman; I had seen them draw up resolutions of 
sympathy and protest in behalf of a Negro preacher who was in the 
penitentiary for manslaughter; I had seen them expel a poor minister 
who had built them a fine church, for the alleged reason that he ‘had 
afterward burned the church down,’ though there was no legal proof 

* Corrothers, In Spite of the Handicap, p. 191. 


SHOPS CH, 0233: 
* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 146. 


80 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

Py ee EONS) GTS A a 
against the man, who vehemently protested his innocence of the charge. 
After he was expelled, I was requested to ‘publish his degradation 
broadcast in all the daily papers.’ I flatly refused to add to the poor 
man’s burden of sorrow, not knowing anything personally about the 
case. I could not see wherein these ministers were much superior to 
the Negro boat hands among whom I had once worked, and I did not 
particularly relish the thought of close association with them. To be 
sure there were good ministers among them—men of sterling qualities 
—hbut these were in the minority, and were paid little attention to. The 
majority of the ministers were sadly lacking in education, quite often 
far more so than some of the gambling Negro ruffans whom I had 
known on the boat. When I added their mental unpreparedness to 
their unlovely personal traits, I could not see in them enough of those 
better qualifications which fit men for a holy calling or for leader- 
ship. 47 

If there are bad Negro ministers, so also are there good ones, and 
not a few whose struggles in behalf of their race place them in the 
rank of heroes and true prophets. A notable example of heroic min- 
istry was that of the clergyman above quoted. 

He continues: ‘‘As there was no coloured church within twenty- 
five miles of South Haven, I organized the Union Baptist church there ; 
and, with a membership of but fourteen, bought a plot of ground 100 
feet square; and, in eighteen months, had erected a neat church edifice 
valued at $3500.00. It was to me a labour of love for the place where 
I was reared, and for my people there. There were seventy-two col- 
oured people then living in or near South Haven. Only two or three 
of these ever attended the white churches. The rest went their way, 
absolutely without religious opportunity or training. Upon learning 
that I was a minister, they earnestly besought me to establish a church 
for them. I realised that no church could live out of the small num- 
ber of coloured people there; but I believed that the establishment of a 
church would bring in others, especially in the summer season, when 
the city, which had become a popular mid-Western summer resort, was 
filled with its gay crowds of resorters. I believed that the white com- 
munity would also help. And so I proceeded. 

“I worked upon every part of the building; and, with the exception 
of $1000.00 which we borrowed, solicited every dollar that went into 
the church, canvassing among the business men of the city; trudging 
up muddy country roads, and travelling, by boat and rail, in various 

* Corrothers, op. cit., pp. 167-8. 


RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF NORTHERN NEGROES 81 





directions, as far as Chicago, Kalamazoo, Hartford, Dowagiac, St. 
Joseph and Benton Harbor, Michigan. I also gave two Sabbaths in 
each month to the pastorate of a small coloured Baptist church in 
Dowagiac, Michigan, forty miles away. I put nearly all of my $225.00 
into the South Haven church. To support my family, I pitched hay, 
cut corn, canvassed for magazine subscriptions and helped farmers with 
their threshing. I also gave lectures and readings, and preached occa- 
sionally in white churches. I now tried literary work again: I sold 
a few poems to the Criterion; to the Voice of the Negro (then the 
leading coloured magazine), and to the Associated Sunday Magazines. 
My wife also taught music, having about thirty pupils, all of whom but 
two were white. There were no moments of discouragement; but, try 
as we might, there were times when cash was out, and the larder ran 
perilously low. I received no salary whatever from the South Haven 
church, and but $8.00 a month from my Dowagiac congregation. And 
out of that my travelling expenses to and from Dowagiac had to be 
defrayed. And there were times when we had to share our own small 
store of food with our parishioners. 

“We lived continually by prayer. 

“One winter morning when the snow lay three feet deep upon the 
ground, and our last scanty morsel had been put aside for our children; 
when the rent was unpaid, and the last bit of fuel was in the stove, 
and there was no work to obtain, we knelt in prayer together, and 
asked God to help us, #2 His own way, for our children’s sake. While 
we were yet upon our knees, the postman pounded upon the door, and 
a white letter fluttered in. It was from New York, and contained a 
check for $20.00 and a letter from Wm. A. Taylor, then the editor 
of the Associated Sunday Magazines, saying: 

‘We are rather overcrowded at present with material, and particu- 
larly with poetry, but I am retaining this poem for the special reason 
that I want you to have representation in the Magazine.’ 

“Strange! It was five years before that poem was used; and then 
I was pastoring a church in New England at the largest salary I have 
Ever received. itt 

* Corrothers, op. cit., pp. 212-14. 






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CHAPTER 11 
THE NEGRO IN ECONOMIC LIFE 


Negro Landowners, Tenants, and Wage Workers in the Field of Agriculture— 
Rural Negro Homes—Decline in Number of Negroes in Domestic Service— 
Increasing Opportunities for the Negro in Manufacturing and Mechanical 
Industries 


NY one traveling by rail from a Northern or Western state into the 

South will, if he is at all observant, notice an increasing number 
of loafing Negroes from station to station as he approaches the Black 
Belt, and he will probably get the impression that the Negroes are a 
lazy and idle people. And, if he sojourn in the Black Belt for several 
days, he will find much evidence tending to confirm his first impres- 
sion. In the Negro quarters of a town he will observe groups of idle 
Negroes in barber shops and pool-rooms and on street corners, and 
he will probably hear some white man remark, in the phraseology for- 
merly applied to free Negroes from Massachusetts to Georgia, that the 
Negroes are “idle and slothful” or “improvident and indolent.” + 

Furthermore, he may even hear the Negroes themselves expressing 
opinions to the same effect, for it is not uncommon for Negro leaders 
to speak frankly of the weaknesses of their race. William E. Holmes, 
president of the colored college at Macon, Georgia, said, at one of 
the Workers’ Conferences at Tuskegee, that ‘‘at the present time we 
furnish a Jarger number of loafers than any race of people on this 
continent.” ? 

If this evidence were not sufficient to convince one of the Negro’s 
propensity to loaf, additional inquiry would disclose the fact that 
charity work throughout the South is mostly a matter of relief to peo- 
ple of color and that an amazing number of them are buried at public 
expense. 

However, when all of the facts are taken into consideration, it will 
not be at all manifest that the Negroes are as lazy and thriftless as a 
superficial view would lead one to believe. There are a number of 

* Belknap Papers, p. 206; Northrup, The Negro in New York, p. 270. 

* Quoted by Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 60, 

85 


86 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





facts which would strongly support the theory that the Negroes are 
constitutionally no more lazy than any other people. As longshoremen 
they are unsurpassed for energy and speed, and as workers in fer- 
tilizer and tobacco factories or for construction companies they set a 
pace which men of any other race find it difficult to keep up with. It 
is a common observation that Negro women as cooks, and Negro men 
as waiters in private homes, in hotels, and on dining cars, work with 
astonishing snap and dexterity. And, when it comes to cake-walks 
and dances, no other race can even equal them for spirited action and 
endurance. 7 

While the Negroes, upon the whole, spend a lot of their time in 
idleness and vagabondage, they do so from lack of proper stimulus and 
not from innate lassitude. They may not respond as sensitively to 
stimulation, nor to the same kind of stimulation, as the white man, 
but, wherever the conditions are favorable, they display both energy 
and thrift. On Saturday evenings in the cities throughout the South, 
one may see Negroes lined up at the windows of savings banks and 
building and loan associations, awaiting their turn to deposit. 

If now we glance at statistics for light on the industrial status of the 
Negroes, we observe, as the most outstanding fact, that the Negroes 
are engaged chiefly in the cultivation of the soil. 

In 1924, 74.7 percent of them lived in the country, which is ten 
percent less than the proportion living in the country in 1890. 

Of the Negroes employed in agriculture 76.6 percent are tenants; 
23.2 percent, owners; and 0.2 percent, managers. In twenty years the 
percentage of Negro tenants has increased 1.3 percent and the per- 
centage of owners has decreased to the same extent. During the same 
period there has been a similar decrease in percentage of white owners 
and increase of white tenants. 

The value of the land and buildings owned by the Negro farmers 
of the South in 1920 was $522,178,137, an increase in ten years of 
$248,676,472 or ninety-one percent.* The Negroes raise 39.0 percent 
of the cotton crop of the United States; 3.5 of the corn; g percent 
of the rice; 21 percent of the sweet potatoes; and 10 percent of the 
tobacco.* 

Agriculture in the South is congenial to the Negro because the work 
is seasonal and irregular, and it furnishes an easy means of making a 
living. The Negro landowners are scattered over the South upon 


* Negro Year Book, 1921-22, p. 321. 
a Es) Se 


THE NEGRO IN ECONOMIC LIFE 87 


tracts varying in size from a quarter of an acre to 1,000 acres. The 
predominance of mulattoes as landowners is very noticeable.® A tour 
through the rural South will bring one to many districts in which the 
Negroes seem to be living in comfort and prosperity. 

Referring to a Negro rural community in Alabama, Sir Harry H. 
Johnston says: “The log-huts on the borders of the beautiful pine 
forests were picturesque, and not at all slovenly. Affixed to each dwell- 
ing house would be a chimney of clay to serve the kitchen hearth. Oc- 
casionally the interior of the house was rather rough. But the beds 
were ample, comfortable, and seemed to be spotlessly clean, with most 
artistic patchwork quilts. These large log cabins were surrounded by 
outbuildings, also of logs, erected for live-stock, cows, horses, mules, 
donkeys, poultry, and pigs. 

“In the better class of negro homesteads the dwelling-house was 
neatly built of grey planks, the roof of grey shingles, with glass win- 
dows, green shutters, and green veranda rails... . The front garden 
of these negro houses was always fenced off from the road by a 
plantation, and nearly always divided into flower-beds. These at the 
time of my visit (November) were still gay with chrysanthemums, and 
bordered by violet plants in full bloom, scenting the air deliciously. 
The garden might also contain a rough pergola of pea-vine and orna- 
mental clumps of tall pampas grass, or of the indigenous Erianthus 
reed ; there would almost certainly be wooden beehives, and beyond the 
flower beds a kitchen garden containing cabbages, pumpkins, sweet 
potatoes, gourds, and the vegetables. In the back premises there was 
an abundantly furnished poultry yard of fowls, guinea-fowls, turkeys, 
and geese—the latter being licensed wanderers, requiring no supervi- 
sion. There was sure to be a pigsty, for the pig is as necessary to the 
Negro farmer as to the Irish peasant. Then there would be stables 
for mules and horses, cowsheds, barns, and stacks of hay. A planta- 
tion of cotton might extend for ten to a hundred acres around the 
homestead. 

“The interior of these houses was almost always neat and clean, 
and divided into at least two bedrooms, a hall, a kitchen, and a parlour. 
The big wooden bedsteads not only had clean linen, but were spread 
with handsome quilts of gay colours worked by the mistress of the 
house. Some of these patchwork quilts—as in Liberia—exhibited real 
artistic talent. ... There are usually many pictures on the walls: 
chiefly coloured prints from newspapers. It was almost invariable to 

*Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 113. 


88 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





see in these negro homes (all over America) portraits of Booker 
Washington, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. DuBois, of Presidents 
Lincoln and Roosevelt, and even of the late King Edward VII and 
Queen Victoria. . . . In several farmhouses the housewife would show 
me with pride her china cabinet. ... Besides a large family Bible 
there might be a number of other books, some of which were manuals 
dealing with the cultivation of cotton and maize, or the fertilization of 
the soils. . . . Most of the farmers I visited had a substantial sum in 
the local bank... .® 

“Truly, there is beauty in the South: the sleepy South. A sense of 
well being, a quiet satisfaction with the climate, the food, the tempera- 
ture, the lonely surroundings, the absence of all external worry which 
should go far not only to appease race quarrels, but to make the natives 
of Alabama, Southern Georgia and Northern Louisiana sensible to their 
privileges in being the citizens of such a delightful region. Here there 
is just enough of winter, just a sufficient touch of frost in the air be- 
tween January and March to keep the resident vigorous and to check 
the excessive growth of vegetation. Then comes the spring with a riot 
of loveliness in wild flowers, which must surely touch the heart even of 
the stolid negro. The summer may be very hot, but it is dry and 
there is always the shade of the ineffably beautiful wood, with mag- 
nolias two hundred feet in height, starred with their huge creamy-white 
flowers, while the aromatic scent of the pines pervades the whole state 
with a wholesome and pungent perfume... .? 

“How often I have contrasted in my mind the life of those Negroes 
in the Southern States with that of our English poor: how often I felt 
it to be greatly superior in comfort, happiness, and even in intellectu- 
ality, for many of these peasant proprietors of Alabama had a greater 
range of reading, or were better supplied with newspapers, than is the 
case with the English peasantry, except in the home counties. . . .8 

“Some of the ‘old time’ colonial mansions of the ante-bellum period 
are now owned by negroes or mulattoes, in one or two instances actual 
descendants of the slaves on the estate which the ‘great house’ dom- 
inated. In one instance pointed out to me the handsome old dwelling 
with its avenue of liveoaks had been purchased from his former white 
master by the slave boy grown up to be a prosperous farmer.’ ® 


*Johnston, The Negro in the New World, p. 426. 
"Tbid., p. 427. 
*Tbid., p. 429. 
LB OL AST. 


————— 


THE NEGRO IN ECONOMIC LIFE 89 


A very peculiar and picturesque class of Negro landowners is found 
in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. Some of the 
dwellers in these islands were born in Africa, and landed in America as 
slave children in the ’forties and ’fifties. “Many of the Sea Islanders,” 
says Sir Harry H. Johnston, “retain a remembrance of their original 
African language (which in the few words I have seen in print ap- 
pears to be of the Yoruba stock, or from the Niger delta). They re- 
tain their belief, or their parent’s belief, in witchcraft and fetishes, they 
maintain their medicine-men—‘guffer doctors’—and their fetish temples, 
called ‘Praise Houses. It is here that their religious dances—called 
very appropriately ‘shouts——take place. In the less visited islands the 
‘English’ of these negro squatters and fishermen is scarcely recogniz- 
able as English, and contains many African words and a few Portu- 
guese expressions current once on the West Coast of Africa. ... 
They are also pure negroes, entirely without any infusion of white 
blood. ... They are almost all peasant proprietors, many having 
bought their holdings from the State out of confiscated and abandoned 
white plantations.” 7° The chief product of these islands is the famous 
Sea Island cotton. 

In many communities in the South one will find colonies of pros- 
perous Negro landowners. For example, in Alabama, centering around 
the Calhoun Colored School, there are ninety Negro families living on 
small farms which they have purchased and paid for under the direc- 
tion of the Calhoun School. “The farming is diversified,” says Charles 
Dickinson, an officer of the school, “and conducted by methods con- 
spicuously in advance of those used on the neighboring plantations. 
Vegetable gardens are on all the farms and improve from year to year, 
as do the fencing, the ownership of live stock, and the farm buildings. 
Flowers and flowering shrubs are in the door-yards. A large majority 
of the houses have been built since the purchase. All but two of these 
have been fully paid for, and these will be soon. Some have five, six, 
seven, or eight rooms. 

“More significant than the material advance is the moral trans- 
formation. There is no crime. What vice there is, is confined mainly 
to the few tenants of the most prosperous farmers, and the ill-behaved 
are soon sent away. Among the landowners—land being held by hus- 
band and wife together—every woman is virtuous, and only two or 
three of the men are reputed to be otherwise. There is not one thief. 
The boys and girls are like their parents. It would be difficult to find 

IGS DAT 2: 


go THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





a more moral farming community, white or colored, South or 
North.” 14 

These home-owning colonies illustrate the wonderful transforma- 
tion which may be wrought in the life of the Negro through wise lead- 
ership. Unfortunately, however, such leadership as the Negro has 
had has been mostly directed with might and main to pulling him away 
from these splendid, but rapidly passing, opportunities. 

The Negro tenants and share workers are mostly found in the Mis- 
sissippi Delta where the landholdings are very large. In this region 
there are two systems of utilizing Negro labor. 

The first is the métayer or cropper system. 

“The cropper,” says Stone, “furnishes his labour in planting, cul- 
tivating, and gathering the crop; the landowner furnishes the land, the 
team and the implements; and the crop is divided equally between them. 
The planter advances to the cropper such supplies as are needed dur- 
ing the year, to be paid for out of the latter’s half of the crop.” ?? 

The second is the fixed rent system, under which the land is rented 
for a fixed sum per acre, varying, with cotton prices and the charac- 
ter of the soil, from five to seven dollars. Where a lint rent is taken 
it varies from eighty to 100 pounds. Often the planter furnishes a 
mule to the renter, charging twenty-five dollars. The landlord is pro- 
tected from loss by a law giving him a lien on the renter’s crop for 
the rent and supplies. The renter, by the exercise of common thrift 
and economy, can become independent in two or three years. The 
successful Negro farmers are those who own their land, or who rent 
land and furnish their own supplies. The class of Negro tenants who 
have to be furnished with supplies rarely rise into the rank of the 
proprietors or independent renters. They are generally thriftless and 
migratory, and need close supervision, They are prone to spend every 
Saturday at the nearest town, to drive their mules to death on Sunday, 
to abandon their crops at a critical stage, to go off on an excursion, 
or to attend religious revivals. Their traditional Christmas holiday 
begins several days before December 25th, and ends several days after 
January 1st. They are careless with tools, wasteful of supplies, and 
inclined to use the fences for firewood.'* With this class there is no 
connection between their earnings and their stability. Whether they 
come out at the end of the year behind or ahead, they are equally apt 

™ Southern Workman, Oct., 1923, p. 484. 


i At, ; 
Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 90. 
TED.) Dy THO. 


THE NEGRO IN ECONOMIC LIFE QI 


to move to another plantation or to town. The well-being of this 
class is in proportion to the intelligence and strictness of the paternal 
control. 

In the fall of the year there is a great demand for extra labor in 
picking the cotton. The supply comes from the surrounding towns, 
which empty themselves of their Negro population. A good picker can 
average 200 pounds a day, and he receives for this more money per day 
than he or she could earn as a cook, washwoman, or nurse in any town. 
Hence, during certain months in the fall, the white people of the towns 
find it difficult to keep any kind of Negro servant. 

In the cotton belt the gin crews and engineers are practically all 
Negroes, and there are Negro foremen, agents, and sub-managers. 

The housing conditions of the renter class are generally inferior to 
those of the proprietor class, but are undergoing rapid improvement 
and are not half so bad as they are represented to be by critics hostile 
to the South. 

“On the plantation,” says Stone, “the one-room cabin, that béte 
notre of social scientists, is not in evidence. They disappeared many 
years ago. Where one still stands it is deserted or temporarily occu- 
pied by cotton pickers or day hands.” ** 

In Louisiana, the Negroes play an important part in the sugar-cane 
industry. Many of them, to this day, remain on the same plantations 
upon which they were born. 

“The field work in the vast plantations of sugar-cane,” says Sir 
Harry Johnston, “is also mainly in the hands of the negro men, women 
and children, who toil for good wages under the supervision of negro 
and white overseers. A few Italians or Sicilians work alongside the 
black people, without quarreling, but without social intermixture. By 
negro labor the cane is attended through the year. In November- 
December it is cut, stripped of leaves, and carefully laid on the ground 
in parallel rows, ready to be picked up mechanically by machinery— 
huge arms and fingers cleverly directed by negroes or mules (working 
in a merry accord which seems unattainable between mules and white 
men)—and deposited in large waggons. When the cane is first laid 
low with great knives, it lies—with its unnecessarily luxuriant leaves— 
in many acres of hopeless confusion about the sturdy limbs and bulky 
petticoats of the negro women. But—as if by magic—it is deftly 
looped, pruned, and laid in absolutely straight rows while you stand 
and watch. The colour of the cane being mainly light purple these lanes 

“ Op. cit., p. 98. 


g2 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


of canestalks constitute, with the alternate intervals of rejected foliage 
(up and down which the mule teams and machinery are driven), rib- 
bons of mauve between bands of yellow-green. Thus the flat plains 
of Louisiana at this season resemble vast silken skirts in two gay col- 
ours, slashed and trimmed, here and there, by white roads and dykes of 
pale blue water, and fringed along the distant outer-edge with grey- 
green forest. Trains or trucks or miniature railways, mule waggons, 
and even ox-carts convey the cut cane to the crushing mills. It is only 
between November and February that the great factories where the 
sugar is made and refined are working with all the hands at high pres- 
sure, and perhaps in November and December only that an unremitting 
seven-days-a-week, night-and-day labour of black men and white men 
is carried on. This is the critical period. The cane must be cut and 
carried before any frost can cause deterioration; and as soon as it is 
cut it must be crushed. Machinery working with a furlong of ‘end- 
less’ chain transfers the cane from the carts and railway trucks up an 
ascending trough into the grinding-mills on the upper story of the 
factory. Here the cane is passed through three sets of steel mills 
until its refuse fibre comes out absolutely flat and dry, and is carried 
automatically into the giant furnaces which create the steam power of 
the establishment.” 1° 

All along the Atlantic coast from Maryland to Florida, Negroes are 
engaged in the fishing industry. Some of them own their craft while 
others work for white proprietors. In the canneries the Negroes are 
the chief laborers. 

Next to agriculture the largest number of Negroes find employment 
in domestic and personal service. According to the census of 1920 
there are 1,064,590 Negroes employed in this field. This is less by 
35,125 than the total in 1910. The Negroes show the same tendency 
as the whites to abandon domestic service in favor of industry which 
offers shorter hours and more pay. 

'The Negro servant problem in the South is the same as the white 
servant problem in the North and West. The more ambitious and 
more intelligent men and women of both races can always find better 
Opportunities in other fields. Hence, the servant problem is becoming 
acute all over the country. Not only is the supply of servants be- 
coming less proportionately every year, but a lower type of men and 
women every year occupy the ranks of domestic service. The scarcity 

* Johnston, op. cit., p. 453. 


THE NEGRO IN ECONOMIC LIFE 93 


of servants is such that the feeble-minded, the morons, and the un- 
trained can find ready employment. The inferiority of Negro ser- 
vants in the South now, as compared to two or three decades ago, is 
a matter of universal observation. In high-class hotels and restaurants, 
where wages equal those of the factory, white waiters are displacing 
the Negro waiters. The only remedy lies in the direction of elevating 
domestic service to the rank of a profession which would furnish trained 
help by the hour instead of by the day and raise the wages above the 
level of the unskilled workers in industry. Negro washwomen, who 
numbered 283,557 in 1920, are rapidly giving way to the steam laundry. 

But, notwithstanding the tendency of the Negroes to leave domestic 
service, over 1,000,000 of them still remain in this field, and for a long 
time to come it will be a chief means of their livelihood. And, while 
upon the whole domestic service is falling to an inferior class of Ne- 
groes, a large proportion of the workers in this field are not only 
competent, but are unequaled by any similar class of workers of any 
race. Southern white people, and also Northern people visiting the 
South, come into contact mostly with the serving class of Negroes and 
get their impressions of the Negro race from this class. For the most 
part this impression is a pleasing one. No one can fail to notice the 
peculiar animation and genuine delight which the average Negro ser- 
vant on the Pullman car, in any dining room, or about any hotel dis- 
plays in rendering service. The Negro’s childish good nature, his eager- 
ness to please, and his evident feeling of pride and satisfaction when 
he perceives that his service is appreciated, leave pleasant impressions 
upon every patron and make him feel that life is the more worth while 
for such cheerful and kindly service. 

The Negroes who are leaving the farms, and also those leaving the 
domestic service in towns, are going most largely into the manufactur- 
ing and mechanical industries. The number of Negroes in these fields 
increased 156 percent from 1900 to 1910. Of the total number em- 
ployed in these industries there are 115,874 employed in the lumber and 
furniture industries; 22,349, in the glass, clay, and stone industries; 
24,734, in textile industries; 19,739, in the fertilizer and chemical 
industries. 

Trade and transportation ranks fourth of the industries in point of 
number of Negroes gainfully employed in the South. In the line of 
transportation many Negroes find employment as longshoremen, rail- 
way porters, firemen, section-hand workers, and so forth. 


94 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Probably ninety percent of the Negroes employed in manufacturing 
and mechanical occupations and in trade and transportation, are doing 
unskilled work. 

The upward strides of the Negro are shown most clearly in his rise 
as a proprietor. From the standpoint of the capital involved his 
greatest success is the organization and management of insurance com- 
panies. The total assets of Negro insurance companies are estimated 
at $6,500,000. These companies cover the field of life, fire, and sick- 
benefit insurance, and they are all located in the South except two 
companies in Pennsylvania, one in Ohio, and two in Illinois. 

There are seventy-two Negro banks in the United States, with a to- 
tal capital of $2,500,000. All are located in the South except two in 
Massachusetts and two in I[lIlinois. 

Negro proprietors of smaller enterprises are as follows: Restaurant 
and café keepers, 6,369; grocers, 5,550; hucksters and peddlers, 3,434; 
builders and contractors, 3,107; butchers and meat dealers, 2,957; coal 
and wood dealers, 1,155; hotel keepers, 973; undertakers, 953; billiard 
and pool-room keepers, 875; real-estate dealers, 762; proprietors of 
general stores, 7360; proprietors of drug stores, 695; proprietors of dry- 
goods stores, 280. 

There are a number of Negroes engaged in manufacturing. In 
Durham, North Carolina, there is a textile mill which manufactures 
hosiery, the product being sold by white salesmen in North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and New York. “So far as I have 
heard,” said Booker Washington, “there has been no man to raise the 
color question when he put on a pair of these hose made by Negroes.” 1° 
There are in Durham also two brick factories, and an iron foundry 
turning out plows, laundry heaters, and so forth. 

Elsewhere in the South one may come upon Negro proprietors of 
saw mills and clothing factories, but as yet Negro ventures in the line 
of manufacturing have been few and of a petty character. 

Altogether about 60,000 businesses of one kind or another are con- 
ducted by Negroes. These have organized a National Business League 
with the object of stimulating the development of Negro enterprises. 
This league has branches in all of the Southern states and also in 
New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, and California. 
Annual meetings are held in various parts of the country. Negroes 
who show any enterprise or thrift, and conduct themselves well, find 
plenty of encouragement from the whites. For example, John Mer- 

* Independent, Vol. 70, p. 624. 


THE NEGRO IN ECONOMIC LIFE 95 


rick, the leading Negro of Durham, North Carolina, started on his ca- 
reer with money loaned to him by General Julian S. Carr. He is now 
the largest Negro owner of real estate in the city. He has been in- 
terested in insurance and banking, in the establishment of a Negro hos- 
pital, and in the upbuilding of the Negro church to which he belongs. 
The esteem in which he is held by the white people is attested by the 
fact that when his daughter was married “more than three hundred 
of the best white people were present, bringing with them costly pres- 
ents for the bride.” 7 

Another rich Negro in the same town, R. B. Fitzgerald, owes his 
success almost entirely to Southern white men. Mr. Blackwell, the 
great tobacco manufacturer, once said to him, “Fitzgerald, get all the 
Negroes and mules you can and make brick. I will take all you can 
make.” Fitzgerald followed the instruction and to-day he not only 
turns out 30,000 bricks a day from his $17,000 plant, but he owns be- 
sides 100 acres of land within the city limits, and has $50,000 worth of 
real estate.*® 

White people will purchase without hesitation a Negro-manufac- 
tured product and will often patronize Negro retail stores. Referring 
again to Durham, North Carolina, Booker T. Washington says, “Each 
groceryman, each textile manufacturer, each tailor, in fact, all the 
Negro tradesmen and business men numbered many white customers 
among their most substantial purchasers.” 7% 

The author of this book used to know a Negro, Paul Barringer, who 
owned 100 houses in Concord, North Carolina, also a grocery store, 
which he personally conducted. Practically all of his customers were 
white. Scott Bond, an ex-slave and negro merchant in Madison, Ar- 
kansas, said in his address to the American Negro Business League, 
“Both black and white patronize us, and I want to say, to the credit of 
the Southern white man, the chance for a negro to succeed in the South, 
in a business way, is as good as it can possibly be anywhere.” ”° 


* Washington, “Durham, North Carolina, a City of Negro Enterprise,” 
Independent, Vol. 70, p. 624. 

* Washington, op. cit. 

lid. Dp. 043. 

*” Weatherford, Negro Life in the South, p. 52. 


CHAR DE Rigi 
DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEGRO 


Negro Quarters in Cities—Looseness of Family Ties—Handicap of Negro Mothers 
in Having to Work Away from Home and Support the Family—Short 
Period of Infancy—Progress in the Development of Chastity in Spite of 
Adverse Conditions—Rich and Varied Social Life 


HE domestic life of the Negroes, like that of the white people, is 
seen at its best in the rural districts. The members of the family, 
being dependent upon each other, develop strong family ties. The 
children, being constantly under parental oversight, are better grounded 
in habits of industry and better disciplined than children in the cities, 
whose parents live generally in overcrowded houses and often work 
away from home. For the Negroes, as for the whites, one drawback to 
rural life is that the educational opportunities are not so good as in the 
cities, but this drawback does not counterbalance the many advantages 
which rural life offers. It would be better for our people if more 
white people, as. well as more Negroes, lived in the country. 

The social life of the Negroes in the country consists mainly of the 
Saturday visits to the nearest town and the Sunday visits to the nearest 
Negro church. In some districts, however, the rural people have social 
clubs, and attend lodge meetings in the towns. 

The tenant and wage class of Negroes change residence too often 
to form any valuable connection with the rural church, social club, or 
town lodge. 

In the cities of the South, the Negroes generally reside in segregated 
quarters. In Baltimore there are several such quarters, some of them 
comparing favorably with respectable residential districts of the whites. 
In Richmond, Virginia, the Negro quarter embraces a large area of 
two-story brick residences formerly occupied by whites. From the 
general appearance of the streets and houses, one would take the quarter 
to be that of the middle class of whites. In every large Southern city 
there are very respectable Negro residential neighborhoods. 

In most of the cities the several Negro quarters represent different 
classes of the Negro population. In one quarter you see substantial 

96 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEGRO 97 





and attractive houses owned and occupied by the more prosperous and 
educated class of Negroes. In another quarter you see dilapidated 
houses occupied by the thriftless class and the vicious class. The 
former quarter is predominantly mulatto. The latter quarter is more 
strictly black, and is usually designated by some such derisive name as 
the Bowery, Sheriff’s Hill, Snow Hill, Haiti, Buzzard’s Roost, etcetera. 
The mulattoes form a sort of aristocratie de couleur, and stand aloof 
from the blacks. 

In many towns there is something of the same kind of antipathy 
between the mulattoes and the blacks that one finds in the Republic 
of Haiti. Mulattoes generally intermarry among themselves, and the 
increasing proportion of mulattoes in our population is due mainly to 
the illicit relationship between the mulattoes and blacks, and between 
the whites and blacks. 

Upon the whole more Negroes than whites marry, and widows and 
widowers more often remarry. A bachelor or spinster is rare among 
the Negroes. However, the marriage bond is more often broken 
among the Negroes than among the whites. The reasons for this are 
that husbands and wives are often unfaithful and both are extremely 
jealous, that the wives are not dependent on their husbands, and are 
therefore free to leave them for any good reason, and that the work 
of the husbands and wives often forces them to live apart, thus favor- 
ing intrigue with chance acquaintances. According to an investigation 
made of Io1 families in a low-class Negro quarter in Durham, North 
Carolina, forty of the women represented themselves as widows. The 
fact was that for various reasons these women had left their husbands 
or had been abandoned by them. A survey of a Negro neighborhood 
in Kansas City, Missouri, showed that “of 649 families, 209, or more 
than 32 per cent are separated.” ? 

Under the matrilineal form of the family in Africa, the children 
take the name of the mother, who by custom supports them and also 
her husband. This African custom seems to have survived to a con- 
siderable extent among a type of Negroes of to-day, and is often the 
subject of comment.? The Negro author Thomas says that “in all of our 
cities, North and South, there is a large class of freedwomen who, 
by their unaided efforts, pay their house rent, and feed and clothe 
their children, while their dissolute husbands roam about in wanton idle- 

* Martin, Our Negro Population, p. 124. 


7 Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 141; Odum, Social and Mental Traits of 
the Negro, p. 156. 


98 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


ness.” ® A survey of a Negro quarter in Kansas City, Missouri, brought 
out the fact that ““The mother spends much less on her clothing than the 
father.” * The practice of Negro cooks in carrying home the customary 
basket of left-overs is partly due to the disposition of Negro husbands 
to throw the support of the family upon their wives. A Negro cook 
who has been in the service of my family for thirty years, and has 
kept up the basket habit, says that her husband has rarely contributed 
anything to pay house rent or buy clothing or provisions for 
the family. Among the more prosperous and educated class of 
Negroes, the husbands support their families after the manner of white 
husbands. 

Negro children in cities have little opportunity to grow up strong 
physically or morally. In many cases the mother works away from 
home. The percentage of Negro females in the South who work for 
a living is about four times as great as that of white females (41.3 per- 
cent for Negro females and 11.8 percent for white females). The 
mother who works away from home has neither the time nor the 
disposition to be a home-maker. Infants, being left alone, learn to 
crawl and walk much earlier than white infants, and learn to talk much 
later. Children from four to ten years old often have the daily care 
of the younger ones. The mother rushes off to work and often leaves 
nothing for the children’s breakfast except left-overs from the last 
meal. Often the only regular meal is at night when the mother brings 
home her basket or hurriedly buys something at the market. At times 
the children have not enough and, as often, too much to eat, and 
they seldom have food of the right sort. Milk is rare in the average 
Negro home; hence the frequency of rickets. Children and adults 
often sleep three or four in a bed; they have no night robes and go 
many days without a change of underwear. There is a general absence 
of privacy in the home, and when the parents are away the children 
take to the streets, where they come in contact with moral degenerates 
and acquire familiarity with all the vices and vulgarities. 

The period of infancy of the Negro child is short. Among urban 
Negroes, parental care hardly extends to the age of fifteen. Before 
that time the boys usually leave home, tired of parental restraints and 
longing for independence and for wages to spend on themselves. The 
girls also leave home at an early age, lured away by the love of flashy 


*The American Negro, p. 180. 
* Martin, op. cit., p. 72. 


_ 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEGRO — 99 


dress, the dance, and travel. They secure employment which takes 
them away from home, or they marry, or they fall victims to the 
glare of the red lights. 

Under these untoward conditions, the ties that bind the members 
of a family together will be weak. Professor Odum declares: “The 
Negro has little home conscience or love of home, no local attachment 
of the better sort. He does not know in many cases for months or 
years the whereabouts of his brother and sister or even parents, nor 
does he concern himself about their welfare.” ° “The statement is a 
common one—and there is much to substantiate it—that the members 
of the negro families are more separated now than in the time of 
slavery.” ° 

These statements by Prof. Odum, being based chiefly on his study 
of urban Negroes, do not apply generally to Negroes in the country. 

Negro families in the same neighborhood live very much aloof from 
each other, and rarely form those intimacies with frequent interchange 
of favors which characterize most neighborhoods of white people. Pro- 
fessor Shaler says, “I have never known an instance of lasting sacri- 
ficial friendship between two blacks.” ? 

Among the Negroes who occupy the more crowded quarters of our 
cities the conditions of life are such as to render very difficult the 
development or preservation of any human virtue. In Southern as in 
Northern cities, the Negro quarter is often adjacent to the worst red- 
light district of the whites. The examples that environ the young 
people are mostly those of evil, and Negro girls are early initiated into 
a life of sensuality. A physician in a Southern town remarks, “Many 
girls under twelve years of age seen by me cohabit with men and are 
frequently found with venereal troubles.” ® The prevalence of sexual 
diseases among both Negro men and women is a large factor in their 
high death-rate and declining birth-rate. 

Because of the low moral state of the Negro’s family life, Thomas, 
a Negro author, believed that it would be a good thing to separate all 
Negro children from their parents and raise them up in orphanages.® 

The rate of illegitimacy among Negro women is from ten to fifteen 


° Op. cit., p. 39. 

‘Odum, op. cit., p. 162. 
"The Neighbor, p. 141. 
®Odum, op. cit., p. 172. 
° Op. cit., p. 386. 


100 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


times as great as that among white women,’® and Professor Mecklin 
thinks that it is probably greater than it was in the days of slavery.** 

The white people are generally skeptical in regard to the virtue of 
any Negro woman, and the remark is often made that there is no such 
thing as a chaste Negro woman. This disparaging estimate of Negro 
women is the outcome of the general tendency of the white people 
everywhere to attribute to all Negroes the characteristics of the worst 
type of Negro. The fact is that, among the Negroes as among the 
whites, there are good and bad people, and that in rural districts and 
in every city in the South, there are many virtuous Negro women. In 
rural communities, especially among the property-owning class, there 
are thousands of married Negro women whose fidelity is above sus- 
picion, and in all the cities, especially among the home-owning class 
who are able to separate themselves from the slum influences, there 
are young Negro girls and mothers whose chastity is untainted. One 
of the reasons why the white people have such a skeptical attitude 
toward the virtue of Negro women is that they come in contact with 
only the lowest class of them, i.e., the poor and uneducated, whose oc- 
cupation is that of domestic service. They see and know very little 
of the educated Negro women who enter the better-paid occupations, 
such as that of teaching, or who are the wives of educated and pros- 
perous Negro men. A teacher who has had fourteen years’ experience 
in the Black Belt of Mississippi says: 

“The number of homes where the pure ideal of family life exists 
has increased constantly since I have been in the South. There are 
some pure homes among the poor and illiterate. Among those who are 
educated the dishonored homes are few.” 1? The greatest progress 
that the Negro has made since his emancipation has been the elevating 
of the moral status of the Negro girl and that of the Negro mother. 
His credit for this is all the greater because sexual incontinence is a race 
heritage, and, during the slave régime and since, the environmental 
conditions have all been unfavorable to his overcoming this predisposi- 
tion. 

The Negroes generally are more social in disposition and more ab- 
sorbed in social life than the white people. They are great talkers, 
delighting to be in a crowd; consequently their social life is so or- 


* Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction, p. 60; Hoffman, Race Traits and 
Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 237. 

“Op. cit., p. 64. 

“Quoted by Mecklin, op. cit., p. 216. 


DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEGRO tor 





ganized as to furnish many and varied occasions for coming together. 
The Negroes take a great interest in their churches, not only because the 
services are times of social intermingling, but also because in connection 
with the churches there are numerous societies which frequently draw 
the people together. 

Outside the church, the Negro finds an outlet for his social cravings 
in a great variety of secret societies. Many of these have insurance 
features providing sick benefits, burial expenses and the erection of 
tombstones, and so forth; others are primarily fraternal with incidental 
benevolent provisions. All of them have rituals and furnish occasions 
for their members to parade the streets in rich regalia and with gilded 
and many-colored banners. The names of some of these societies are 
as follows: Grand Accepted Order of Brothers and Sisters of Love 
and Charity; Knights of Peter Claver; Grand Toe Touch at Mt. Sinai, 
connected with the Baptist Church, Mobile; American Woodmen; 
Independent Order of Sons and Daughters of Jacob; Knights of 
Canaan; Mosaic Templars of America. 

The following are the names of some of the Knights of Pythias 
lodges in Mississippi: The Bell of Delta, New Moon, Queen Esther, 
Lily of Valley, Rose of Sharon, Weeping Willow, Bear Garden, 
Hickory Tree, Gloomy Rose, Gold Eagle, and Sweet Pink. 

In a town of only 500 Negro population there may be fifteen or 
twenty societies or lodges. Many Negroes of the town belong to 
from three to five of these societies, and a majority of the members 
belong to more than one society.*? Most of the societies meet fort- 
nightly, their programs frequently including box suppers, musicals, 
and dances, and they hold forth often until midnight. 

These societies, beside furnishing an innocent means of recreation, 
have a tendency to promote thrift and high ideals. Most of them limit 
their membership to persons who are “moral and upright, dealing in 
no illegal business and of good reputation.” *# 

Beside the secret societies, the Negro women have their clubs and 
federation of clubs. In the homes of the well-to-do Negroes there is 
much hospitality and much formal entertaining. The Negro newspapers 
devote a large part of their space to the doings of the colored social 
world. 

Since an elevated family life is fundamental to the progress of 
any people, the most important task of the Southern Negro has been 

*% Odum, op. cit., p. 100. 

“ Tbid., p. 143. 


102 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


the bringing together and binding together of those blood relations 
which constitute the human family. The task has been difficult because 
neither the family traditions handed down from Africa, nor the family 
conditions imposed upon him as a slave to the white man, have been 
favorable to the development of family virtues or family stability ; and 
further because of the demoralizing environment in which generally he 
has been compelled to live. 

In view of his handicaps we can but admire what he has accom- 
plished in the elevation of his home life within the short period of his 
emancipation. Nor can we fail to view with charity the faults which 
his family life still retains and extend to him a helping hand (by pro- 
viding better housing conditions, and better protection to his home), 
in his effort to overcome those faults. 


— 


CHAPTER 13 
THE NEGRO AS A POLITICAL FACTOR 


Strength of the Negro Vote and Possibilities of Negro Domination—Franchise 
Laws Limiting the Negro Vote—Reasons for the Grandfather Clause—Re- 
sult of Removal of the Negro Menace in Bringing a Better Class of White 
Men into Politics 


HE political aspect of the Negro problem in the South can be un- 
derstood only by taking into account the number and distribution 
of the Negroes in that section. 

According to the 1920 census, there were nearly 9,000,000 Negroes 
in the Southern states, 27 percent of the total population. In the South 
Atlantic States the Negroes are 30.9 percent of the total; in the East 
South Central, 28.4 percent ; and in the West South Central, 20.2 percent. 
The Negroes constitute nearly a third of the total population in Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas and more than a third in Georgia, 
Louisiana, and Florida. There are 264 counties in the South in which 
Negroes preponderate. These counties lie in the eastern section of 
Virginia and North Carolina, the Tidewater and Piedmont section of 
South Carolina, central Georgia and Alabama, the delta region of Mis- 
sissippi and Louisiana, northern Florida, and a small coastal region of 
Texas. In two states, Mississippi and South Carolina, the blacks out- 
number the whites. There are six counties in Mississippi in each of 
which the whites form less than ten percent of the population. 

There are thirty-two counties in the South which have no Negro 
population, of which twenty-eight are in Texas, two in Oklahoma, one 
in Arkansas, and one in North Carolina. 

“There are more Negroes in Mississippi,” says Stone, “than in 
Cape Colony, or Natal, even with the great territory of Zululand an- 
nexed to the latter; more than in the Transvaal, and not far from as 
many as in both the Boer colonies combined ; more than in Jamaica and 
Barbadoes combined; more than in Trinidad and all the remaining 
English islands combined (excluding those just named); more than 
in Cuba and Porto Rico combined; more than in either Haiti or San 
Domingo.” + Mississippi contains more Negroes than all the states 


* Studies in the American Race, Problem, p. 471. 
103 


104 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


outside of the South. If New England had 8,000,000 Negroes her 
Negro population would be the same in proportion to the whites as 
that of Mississippi. 

Everywhere the attitude toward the Negro reflects the proportion 
of Negroes in the population. In all the South the Negro population is 
large enough to be a disturbing factor in politics. Even in states where 
the Negroes constitute only one-fourth of the population, they out- 
number the whites in some districts and counties and their aggregate 
vote would enable them to dominate those states if the white people 
should divide politically. The white people of the South correctly 
understand Negro domination to mean the control of any state by a 
party whose predominant strength is in the solid Negro vote. Of course, 
in such a case the Negroes would not hold all of the offices. The white 
politicians who manipulate the Negro vote would see to it that the 
Negroes got only the crumbs which fell from the political “pie counter,” 
but the men in office would be merely the agents of the Negro, and 
that condition, as the experience of Reconstruction has demonstrated, 
would be vastly more dangerous to good government than the control 
of a state by a purely Negro party. To argue that there can be no 
Negro domination unless the Negroes hold the offices is to trifle with 
the facts of history, and such argument has not a feather’s weight 
with the Southern whites. The so-called “Lily White’ movement among 
the white Republicans in the South is a commendable effort of the 
party to eliminate Negro domination. They know that, if the Negroes 
dominate the party, respectable white people will shun it, and they 
hope by preventing control of the party by the Negro, to win over 
a considerable number of the best white people whose sympathies would 
naturally be with the Republicans. In the Upper South, where the 
Negro population is relatively small, the Republican party has among 
its leaders men who in intellect and character rank with the best men 
of the South, and their number will increase as the Negro domination 
of the party decreases. The white Republicans realize as fully as the 
Democrats the danger of Negro domination of a state or of a political 
party. 

The methods employed by the white people of the South to over- 
throw the Negro-carpet-bag régime, and to maintain control thereafter 
were such as to shock the moral sensibilities of the best class of white 
people, in spite of their conviction that such methods were the only 
means of preserving civilization. In order to dispense with these irreg- 


THANE GROVAS MAM POLIRIGATY FACTOR 105 


ular and precarious methods, the leading men of the South began to 
advocate the enactment of franchise laws, comformable to the Federal 
and State Constitutions, which would remove the Negro menace. The 
best lawyers in the several states gave oral and written opinions to the 
effect that suffrage qualifications could be enacted which would stand the 
test of the courts and have the effect of eliminating a large proportion of 
Negro voters. 

Influenced by these legal opinions and the general desire of the 
best people to remove the racial disorders accompanying every election, 
the legislators in several of the states set to work to frame restrictive 
franchise laws, or to provide for such laws by amendments to the state 
constitutions. 

The new laws restricting the suffrage were enacted in the following 
order: Mississippi, 1890; South Carolina, 1895; Louisiana, 1898; 
North Carolina, 1900; Alabama and Virginia, 1901; Georgia, 1908; and 
Oklahoma, I9gIo. 

The suffrage was restricted by the following requirements for voting: 

1. The payment of taxes, ie., a poll tax or other tax must have 
been paid. This is required in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, 
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and 
Georgia. 

2. The ownership of property. In Alabama a citizen must own forty 
acres of land, or personal property to the value of $300. In Georgia a 
citizen must own forty acres of land or other property to the value of 
$500. In Louisiana and South Carolina the citizen must own property 
to the value of $300. Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia have 
no property requirements. 

3. Ability to read and understand. In Alabama, South Carolina, 
and Mississippi the citizen must be able to read and understand the 
Constitution of the United States. In Louisiana, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Virginia, and Oklahoma the citizen must give proof of his 
ability to read and write. 

In commenting upon these requirements the Outlook says: “No one 
of them makes color and race, per se, a disqualification for suffrage. 
No one of them, in terms, violates the provisions of the Fifteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution. In all of them alike the negro as well 
as the white man who complies with the conditions is entitled to be 
registered. This is the first and evident fact which ought to be under- 
stood and recognized by all. Whatever may be the effect of these pro- 


106 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





visions, whatever may have been the object with which they have been 
framed, they do not, in words, exclude the negro from the ballot be- 
cause he is a negro... . 

“There are two provisions in the Southern Constitutions to which 
there are serious objections, which, it is only just to say, were vigorously 
opposed by leading and influential citizens in the Southern States. One 
of these is the ‘grandfather clause,’ the other the ‘understanding 
clause.’ ” 

The practical difficulty in the enactment of these restrictions was 
that the illiterat: whites were unwilling to vote to disfranchise them- 
selves, and the restrictive provisions could not pass without the vote of 
these white illiterates. In order to win them for the restrictions, a pro- 
vision was added in North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Ala- 
bama, Virginia, and Georgia to the effect that these restrictions should 
not apply to citizens who could vote in 1867 or to descendants of such 
voters. Such provisions were called collectively the “grandfather 
clause.” It was generally specified that the grandfather clause was to be 
inoperative after a certain date, when the requirements for voting 
would be the same for all citizens without exception. The Supreme 
Court of the United States on June 21, 1915, declared the grandfather 
clause to be unconstitutional; but the decision has had no effect except 
in Georgia and Oklahoma. In the other states the grandfather clause 
had expired by limitation, i.e., the class exempted from the restrictions 
ceased to have the right to register. The grandfather clause served the 
purpose for which it was intended, i.e., it induced the illiterate whites 
to vote for the restrictions. 

The Southern white people generally believe that the practical effect 
of the understanding and literacy requirements is to discriminate fairly 
between those who are fit and those who are unfit to exercise the fran- 
chise. Owing mainly to the widely scattered and isolated habitats of the 
white people of the South, not a few of them have lacked the opportunity 
of an education, but they have formed a large part of the most 
thrifty and intelligent citizens who have acquired by tradition and ex- 
perience the aptitude for self-government. Many of these illiterate 
whites, by reason of their frequent service as jurymen, and as witnesses, 
have acquired a knowledge of Constitutional principles and statute laws. 
The illiterate whites as well as the literate have had their long and 
arduous apprenticeship in the exercise of self-government. 

The grandfather clause having been eliminated by the decision of the 
Supreme Court, the only remaining franchise provision which may be 


THE NEGRO’ AS: AY POLITICAL: FACTOR 107 


objected to is the one requiring the voter to understand the Constitu- 
tion. The Outlook does not, however, object to this provision as unrea- 
sonable, but merely raises the question as to whether in its application 
it is not used to discriminate against the Negro. As to the reasonable- 
ness of this provision, Thomas, a Negro lawyer of Ohio, who played a 
part in the Reconstruction régime in the South and had a first-hand 
knowledge of the Negro’s fitness to exercise the franchise, said, in 
his book on the American Negro, written before the restrictive meas- 
ures were adopted in the South: “A people but one generation removed 
from personal chattelism are neither fit for self-government nor capable 
custodians of the rights of others... .2 They are not a self-govern- 
ing people, and are as incapable of rational self-direction as children. 

“ No citizen, therefore, of this republic should be permitted to 
exercise the privilege of the franchise who cannot read and fairly un- 
derstand the Constitution of the State wherein he resides and the Con- 
stitution of the United States.” * 

It is to be noted that the understanding clause is found in the fran- 
chise requirements of only Mississippi and South Carolina, where the 
Negro population exceeds the white; and in Alabama, where the Negro 
population nearly equals the white. As a matter of fact, this clause is 
applied in those states in such a way as to exclude the nonunderstanding 
Negro and not the nonunderstanding white man. 

In Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama, the clauses requiring ability to 
read and write are so applied as to exclude the illiterate Negro and 
not the illiterate white man. In North Carolina and Virginia, the 
literacy test is applied to both races, but the registers are more attentive 
to the literacy of the Negro than to that of the white man. The liter- 
acy and understanding tests are made to exclude a certain class of 
Negroes, not because of their color, but because experience has shown 
that it is not safe to invest them with the power of the ballot. The 
literacy and understanding tests may not be ideal means of accomplish- 
ing the purpose, but they are the only means which at present seem to 
be practicable. 

To come down to the real core of the matter, in South Carolina 
and Mississippi the Negroes outnumber the whites. Experience has 
shown that both races cannot govern jointly in those states. The white 
people believe that they are better able to govern than the Negro, and 


*The American Negro, p. 355. 
* Tbid., p. 364. 
*Tbid., p. 429. 


108 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


are determined to do it. They propose to do it by some lawful means 
and have adopted lawful means of doing it. If every Negro in South 
Carolina and Mississippi could read and write and understand all of 
the Constitutions in the world, the white people would not allow them 
to control their governments, and, in this respect, they are not different 
from the white people of any other state. If a majority of the people 
of California were Japanese, the fact that they could read and under- 
stand would not have a feather’s weight against the determination of the 
white people to govern that state at all hazards. Or, if a majority of 
the people of Massachusetts were Negroes, the whites of that state 
would no more submit to Negro rule than the people of South Carolina 
or Mississippi. They would prefer to retain white supremacy by some 
lawful expedient, but if that did not work they would control it by 
any expedient that would work. Save by force of arms, no colored 
race is ever going to govern any state in this Republic. This fact is 
fundamental to any discussion of the Negro problem. | 

Before the new franchise laws were enacted, the chief issue in every 
campaign was the menace of the Negro, and the continued harping 
upon this and the methods necessary to win at the polls were distasteful 
to the better class of white men and had a tendency to drive them into 
other careers than politics. It was during this period of unrestricted 
franchise that the brightest and most aspiring men of the South began 
to seek distinction in more promising fields, such as industry, journalism, 
and education. Examples of such men are Walter H. Page, P. P. Clax- 
ton, Edwin A. Alderman, D. F. Houston, Charles D. McIver, Edwin 
Mims, Bruce Payne, George Stevens, James B. Duke, William A, 
Blair, W. P. Bynum, Plato Durham, and W. D. Weatherford. 

The men of high standing in the legal profession began to shun 
politics, and the men who generally rose to leadership were of a ranting 
and old-fogy type who lacked the vision to grasp any other issue than 
that of Negro domination. Industry, education, public health, public 
roads, and adequate and enlightened provision of asylums for the de- 
fective class and of correctional institutes for the criminal class were 
always overshadowed by national issues or forgotten in the frantic effort 
to maintain white supremacy. As long as white supremacy was the only 
issue there could never be much of an issue as to the kind of white 
men who sought office. 

The passage of the new franchise laws has made politics more at- 
tractive to the better class of white people. For example, note the im- 
provement in the quality of Mississippi's governors. “Demagogism,” 


Hey NEGRO AS: Ag PORURICAL FACTOR 109 


says Lester A. Walton, “is on the wane in Mississippi. Blatancy has 
given way to temperate expression. Intolerance is being supplanted 
by tolerance. Vardamanism, symbolical of racial unrest, is on its last 
legs and has lost potency. 

“When Henry L. Whitfield became Governor of Mississippi in 
January, the event marked the dawn of a new era in race relationships 
in a commonwealth where the blacks outnumber the whites. Whit- 
fieldism is the antithesis of Vardamanism. Instead of fomenting racial 
friction by making rabid anti-Negro speeches, Governor Whitfield and 
his followers are bending their efforts toward unifying the two races 
for their common good. 

“Mississippi's new chief executive clearly defined his attitude on 
race relations in his inaugural address when he said: “The Negroes 
still make up slightly more than one-half of Mississippi’s population. 
Any plans for a new era, any change in our economic life, any reorgani- 
zation of our agriculture or industry which leaves them out, is doomed 
to failure. There is a definite relation between their happiness and 
prosperity and that of the State as a whole. 

““If we would hold these laborers in the South, we must compete 
with the Northern employer on his own terms. We must improve 
working and living conditions, look after the Negro’s health, foster 
manual training and modern agricultural methods, and see to it that 
at all times the less-favored black man shall get a square deal in busi- 
ness relations and in the courts. Our own self-interest prompts it; 
humanitarian considerations demand it; our Christian duty as a more 
favored people enjoins this upon us.’”’ ® 

The recent great industrial rebound in the South, the rapid strides 
she has recently made in education, sanitation, good roads, and other 
internal matters, have been due to the new type of leader. 

In several Southern states the Negro vote is still so large that any 
great division among the white people would result in political disaster 
such as happened to North Carolina in 1897 when the Negro vote elected 
Governor Russell and a populist legislature. But in spite of this 
danger, the white people are able to vote rather independently on national 
issues, and the fear of Negro control is sufficiently removed to allow the 
attention of the white people to be concentrated on local conditions and 
to induce a higher type of white people to take the lead in politics. 


5 Outlook, Apr. 9, 1924. 


CHAPTER 14 
REGULATION OF NON-POLITICAL RIGHTS 


Separation of the Races on Railway Trains and Street Cars—Impracticability of 
Street Car Separation in Large Cities—The Problem of the Sleeping Car— 
Negroes Have Their Own Hotels, Restaurants, Theaters, and So Forth 


HE laws of the several Southern states require separation of the 

races in public schools. Excepting Missouri, they also require 
separation in railroad cars, and excepting Missouri, Maryland, and 
Kentucky, they require separation in street cars. The general policy in 
the South is to separate the Negroes from the whites in all public 
places where their commingling might give rise to disorder or prove a 
source of embarrassment to either race, and custom often sanctions 
separation in cases where the law is silent. 

The Negroes raise no objection to the separate schools, and do not 
altogether object to separation in other respects, provided they are 
furnished accommodations equal to those for the whites. In the matter 
of railway transportation the Negroes complain very loudly because 
they are obliged to submit to inferior accommodations. In most cases, 
however, their complaint is more a matter of habit and of infection from 
the Negro press of the North, which characterizes all racial separation 
as “jim-crowism,” than from actual inconveniences suffered. Any in- 
telligent observer who has traveled extensively through the South is 
obliged to notice that in most instances, so far as the day coaches are 
concerned, the Negroes ride in more comfort than the whites. They 
occupy a part of the same coach and generally have much more room. 
In traveling over the main lines of the South, I have made it a point to 
observe the apartments occupied by the colored people, and I have 
rarely seen them as much crowded as those of the whites. The accom- 
modations for colored people are, however, often very inferior on branch 
lines where the day coaches for both white and colored passengers 
are old and dilapidated. The trains on these lines are generally made 
up of two coaches, the forward one being inferior and divided into a 
smoking apartment for the whites and an apartment for the colored 


people. While the apartment for the colored people is rarely over- 
110 


REGULATION OF NON-POLITICAL RIGHTS It 


crowded, it is difficult to keep clean on account of the miscellaneous 
classes of colored people who occupy it, and respectable Negroes, es- 
pecially educated and self-respecting Negro women, often feel outraged 
to have to endure the disagreeable surroundings. The railroads ought 
to be required to furnish on these lines as good coaches for the Negroes 
as for the whites. The practical difficulty from the standpoint of the 
railroad company is that the company can find no economic disposi- 
tion of old coaches except to use them on the branch lines. I have often 
thought that the railway policy in vogue prior to the era of the legal 
separation of the races on trains was a better one than that of the pres- 
ent. Then the railroads sold first and second-class tickets, and the 
result was a practical separation of the races. The white people bought 
first-class tickets and the colored people the second-class tickets. I 
recall very distinctly that very few colored people ever rode in the first- 
class coaches, and these few were generally well-behaved mulattoes 
whose presence was hardly noticed by the whites. I also recall that 
white men who desired to smoke rode in the second-class coach with 
the Negroes. In those days, however, race prejudice was not so strong 
as it is now. 

When the main railway lines began to put on fast and high-class 
trains, stopping only at large cities, it was not to the interest of the 
railroads to attach second-class coaches. The slower trains then car- 
ried a larger proportion of Negroes and the white people began to com- 
plain of their presence. Often the rowdyism of the Negroes in the 
second-class coaches was unbearable to the whites. 

The state railway commissioners in the South should either require 
as good cars for Negroes as for the whites or compel the roads to sell 
tickets to the Negroes at a second-class rate. 

In spite of all the discomfort endured by the Negroes in the railway 
coaches, Maurice Evans, as a result of his travels in the South, says, 
“Take it all through, I found that the whites were more frequently in- 
commoded by the distinction than the colored.” ? 

The Negro author James D. Corrothers, in relating his experience on 
railways in the South, says: 

“Some separate cars, especially those on the Norfolk & Western 
road, are as clean and commodious as the coaches reserved for white 
people. Even a smoking room is provided. But too frequently the 
separate Negro compartments are without water, poorly ventilated, 
small and dirty. Coloured men and women are often required to use 

* Black and White in the Southern States, p. 143. 


112 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


the same toilet-rooms; and white men, passing through the Negro car, 
frequently light their cigars and smoke in the presence of coloured 
women. Usually only half a baggage car is partitioned off for the use 
of coloured passengers; and over two or three seats of that the train’s 
newsboy will audaciously spread his magazines, papers, and candy, and 
then sit down on half a seat himself, though coloured passengers are 
compelled to stand. The conductor will coolly occupy two or three 
additional seats, checking up his accounts, unperturbed by the discom- 
fort of his passengers. More than once I have stood up while conduc- 
tors sat, and more than once I have ridden weary miles without one 
drop of water. There was plenty of drinking water on the train, but 
none in the Negro compartment. Once a kind conductor allowed me to 
go into the white people’s car to get a drink. 

“White people, however, are not entirely to blame for the bringing 
about of these conditions in the South. Rowdy Negroes often board 
the trains, full of bad liquor, and bent upon a fight. They sit down and 
drink more whiskey, lurch through the car, insult respectable coloured 
women and men, and make themselves not only nuisances but positively 
dangerous, lurching and obscenely cursing, with pistol or knife in hand. 
It is no wonder that white Southern legislators have sought by pro- 
hibitive laws to protect their own men and women from such disgusting 
and dangerous displays of black savagery as this. Nevertheless, it is 
manifestly unfair to compel decent and intelligent coloured people to be 
herded in a car with such creatures, unprotected, without human ac- 
commodations, and insulted by every ruffian on the train, whether white 
or black, simply because their faces are dark.” ? 

The most difficult problem in connection with racial separation in 
transportation is that of providing Pullman accommodations fairly for 
each race. Negroes are not allowed to ride in a Pullman car occupied 
by white people, and so few Negroes would ride in such a car, were 
it provided, that no railroad feels justified in putting one on for the 
Negroes. The result is that Negroes making long journeys, even if 
able to afford a berth in a Pullman car, have to sit up all night and nod 
in a day coach. Booker Washington used to solve the problem for 
himself by reserving the drawing room of a Pullman car. He would 
thus separate himself from the white people, but would pay dearly for 
his night’s lodging. 

There are a number of well-to-do and educated Negro men and 
women who would gladly pay for a berth in a Pullman car and their 

*Corrothers, In Spite of the Handicap, p. 121. 


REGULATION OF NON-POLITICAL RIGHTS 113 


number will increase from year to year; and while it may be a long 
time before their number would justify the railroads in hauling on any 
train a Pullman car for colored people, the time has already arrived 
when something should be attempted in the direction of more comfort- 
able night travel for the colored people. It seems to me that on some 
trains between large cities, on which there is considerable Negro travel, 
a coach or compartment of a coach might be fitted up with berths some- 
what like the tourist sleepers on Western roads, so that any Negro who 
was willing to pay the price could have a comfortable night’s rest. 

The separation of the races in transportation is hard to bring about 
with absolute justice to the Negro, but it seems to be nevertheless a 
necessary policy. This is the view taken of it by a Northern man, Ray 
Stannard Baker. He says: 

“As for the Jim Crow Laws in the South, many of them, at least, are 
at present necessary to avoid the danger of clashes between the ignorant 
of both races. They are the inevitable scaffolding of progress.” * 

The same view of the matter is taken by an Englishman, William 
Archer. In his Through Afro-America is this statement: 

“Well, that day in the black belt of Mississippi brought home to me 
the necessity of the Jim Crow car. The name—the contemptuous, in- 
sulting name—is an outrage. The thing on the other hand, I regard as 
inevitable. There are some negroes (so-called) with whom I should 
esteem it a privilege to travel and many others whose companionship 
would be in no way unwelcome to me, but, frankly, I do not want to 
spend a whole summer day in the Mississippi Valley cheek by jowl with 
a miscellaneous multitude of the negro race.’ * 

The separation of the races on street cars is impracticable in large 
cities. While the space allowed to each race is designated by a sign 
which can be moved from one seat to another, the number of seats re- 
quired by the Negroes on some cars varies from none to all on a single 
run, so that all of the time of the conductor is taken up in adjusting 
the sign. For instance, in the city of Memphis I have taken a car 
at the Union Station which was full of white people; when the car 
passed beyond the business district two-thirds of the passengers were 
Negroes, because the car passed through a Negro section; a mile or two 
farther on the passengers were again only white people. In that city, 
as also in St. Louis, Baltimore, and Louisville, there are cars on which 
a Negro is rarely seen and others on which their number varies greatly 


* Following the Color Line, p. 305. 
we pinta} 


114 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





in each section traversed and at various hours of the day. Hence, in 
those cities there are no jim-crow cars. In cities not so large, while 
there is a pretense of separating the races on the cars, the practical diff- 
culties are such that the Negroes and white pile in and take seats where 
they can find them without regard to the jim-crow sign. Custom and 
mutual consideration, however, incline both races to sit apart when there 
is no crowding. However, in cities which have separation on cars, as 
also in those which have not, there are frequent clashes between the 
races due to the bad manners and impudence of members of one race 
or the other. : 

The Negroes generally have their own hotels, restaurants, theaters, 
and picture shows, and it is rarely that any Negro manifests a desire to 
enter a public place patronized by the whites. In cities having public 
parks and public libraries the Negroes have often justly complained be- 
cause similar provisions were not made for them. Progress is being 
made, however, in establishing parks and libraries for the colored people. 

The problem of race separation in public places seems to be grad- 
ually working itself out to the satisfaction of both races, except in a 
few particulars. The Negroes as well as the white people prefer the 
society of their own race whenever circumstances do not interfere with 
their legitimate business or pleasure. As the Negroes advance in 
wealth and culture, their social institutions become more numerous and 
more satisfying to refined tastes, and therefore there is less occasion or 
inclination for them to come in social contact with white people. If the 
white people will offer to the Negroes adequate transportation accom- 
modations and adequate libraries and parks, the prospect of an increas- 
ing harmony in civic relationships will be hopeful. 


CHAPTER 1s 
THE NEGRO AS A VIOLATOR OF THE LAW 


Greater Frequency of Negro Crime in the City Than in the Country—Greater 
Frequency of Crime Against the Person Than Against Property—Erroneous 
Notions as to the Extent of Negro Theft and Rape—Paramount Importance 
of Bad Environment as a Factor in Negro Crime 


HE institution of slavery in the South set limits to the Negro’s 

rise and also to the depths to which he could fall. Emancipation 
released him in both directions: it permitted the strong to climb up 
and the weak to sink lower. With the shackles of bondage broken, a 
large class of Negroes naturally gravitated toward their ancestral Afri- 
can level. 

The Negro, like the Italian and other races of southern latitudes, 
has the extrovert mental temperament which inclines him to commit 
crimes against the person, or against decency and public order, 
rather than against property. The Negro has a reputation far beyond 
his deserts for petty theft and other crimes against property. The fact 
is that the white man is most distinguished for crime of this sort. 

The bulk of Negroes who come before the courts in the South are 
charged with disorders growing out of the vices, quarrels, and brawls 
among themselves. The crime of stealing is relatively insignificant. 

In Southern cities there is always some slummy Negro quarter 
which is a den of vice. Here the low class of Negro men and women 
congregate to gamble, dance, and revel in sensuality. ‘In every town 
and village,’ says Stone, “from one to a half dozen Negro crap dives 
are run. Around these tables, especially on Saturday nights and Sun- 
days, gather crowds of men and boys of all ages, scarcely one in five 
without a knife or pistol.’”’1 These people get drunk, and in fits of 
anger and jealousy stab and slash and shoot. 

During the days of slavery the Negroes employed in domestic work 
lived on the premises of their master and mistress, and the intimacy of 
contact between them enabled the Negroes to acquire by imitation the 
habits, standards, and moral sentiment of the whites. After emancipa- 


* Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 107. 
II5 


116 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


tion the domestic servants continued for a while to live on the master’s 
premises, occupying one of the old slave cabins, but gradually they took 
up their abode in the Negro quarter of the town where Negro children 
grew up entirely removed from the paternal oversight of white people. 
In these Negro quarters, as pointed out in a previous chapter, the con- 
ditions are very unfavorable to the proper up-bringing of children, 
hence the youthfulness of the criminal class of Negroes.? 

The chief causes of Negro crime are defective family life, lack of 
morale and tradition, bad environment, lack of industrial equipment, 
increasing solidarity among the Negroes, and increasing alienation from 
the whites. . 

Says Odum: “Although the Negro population of the communities 
studied (fifty towns in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and 
Tennessee) averages only a little more than forty per cent of the total, 
the negroes commit, nevertheless, eighty per cent of the total number of 
offences recorded on the criminal dockets. The offence most commonly 
recorded, regardless of sex, is disorderly conduct, by which is meant 
misconduct in public places; drunkenness is the second most common 
offence, and fighting is the third in numerical proportion. If the of- 
fences of the males be considered alone, disorderly conduct is most fre- 
quent ; if the offences of the females be taken alone, fighting is the most 
COMMON iin 

“The list of crimes most commonly committed by negro women in- 
cludes drunkenness, lewdness, profanity, promiscuity, quarreling and 
fighting, disorderly conduct, assault, the keeping of bad houses, gaming, 
retailing whiskey, and vagrancy, especially at night.” * 

Sexual vice, among the Negroes as among the whites, has much to 
do with the state of health of the race. Comparing the slaves and 
free Negroes in this respect, Hoffman says: 

“While it is not possible to prove by statistics that the moral 
condition of the slaves was exceptionally good, all the data at my com- 
mand show that physically the race was superior to the present genera- 
tion, and no physical health is possible without a fair degree of sexual 
morality. It is true that the sexual relations were as lax as they are 
now, but they were lax in the nature of concubinage and irregular sexual 
intercourse, in which affection played at least a small if not an important 
part. In the irregular sexual relations of the present day, prostitution 


? Willcox, Part Two of Stone, op. cit., p. 448. 
* Ibid., p. 474. 
* Social and Mental Traits of the Negro, p. 189. 


THE NEGRO AS A VIOLATOR OF THE LAW 117 


for gain is the prevailing rule, and one of the determining causes of 
the inordinate mortality and high degree of criminality.” ® 

The white people in the South not only believe that the Negro is 
much given to theft, but the more ignorant whites have a notion that 
Negro theft is inborn. As a matter of fact, neither the Negro nor 
any other race has an inherited tendency to crime. The only way in 
which the crime of the Negro is related to his inheritance is that his 
extrovert temperament, i. e., his pronounced emotionalism, predisposes 
him more to crime against the person than against property, to whatever 
extent he may be tempted to commit either. The crime of the Negro, 
like that of other races, is due mainly to bad traditions and bad en- 
vironment, 

In all cities it seems that Negroes are about twice as criminal as 
the whites.° This is what any one would naturally expect in view of 
the more unfavorable environment in which the Negroes live. 

In rural districts, however, the Negroes are not greatly more criminal 
than the whites, especially in communities where the number of Negroes 
owning land approximates the number of whites owning land. In 
the rural districts the gun and the dog protect property, and the Negroes, 
being scattered, do not have the chance to quarrel and fight among them- 
selves. 

In regard to the crime of rape, the available statistics are very scant, 
but enough is known to justify the statement that this crime is not more 
common among the Negro than among other races of the extrovert 
type. The percentage of Negroes who commit rape in the United 
States is less than the percentage for the Italians, Hungarians, Austri- 
ans, French, Russians, Poles, or Mexicans.’?’ While the percentage is 
small in any race, the crime itself is so heinous that it fastens the stigma 
of criminality upon any race in which it is at all outstanding. 

It is commonly supposed that the crime of rape among the Negroes 
in the United States was unknown during the days of slavery and that 
the effect of emancipation was to unchain the Negro man’s passions 
and to turn him into a sort of sex demon. In 1903 the Nation published 
letters showing only four specific cases of rape up to 1864.8 However, 
I have found a surprising number of instances of rape by Negroes 
prior to the Civil War, and I am inclined to think that the supposed 


® Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 236. 
*Odum, op. cit., pp. 196-7. 

"Negro Year Book, 1922, p. 353. 

* Avary, Dixie After the War, p. 385. 


118 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





rarity of the crime in former times has been due to the absence of the 
daily press to inform us of the cases which happened. The number of 
cases of rape has probably increased since the Civil War for reasons 
easily understood. During the days of slavery the master was interested 
in the rapid reproduction of his slaves, and neither male nor female 
slaves were required to exercise sex continence; whereas now illicit sex 
relations are largely governed by commercial considerations and many 
Negro men are without wives or money to satisfy their passions. 

Some years ago, following the press reports of a lynching for rape 
in the South, the indignant editor of an afternoon paper in Madison, 
Wisconsin, said that the rape of’ white women in the South was an 
expression of the Negro’s revenge for what he had suffered as a slave. 
The editor did not happen to know that Negro rape was as common in 
Wisconsin as in Mississippi. In fact, the Negro crime of rape, like his 
other crimes against the person, is an act of impulse generally committed 
without the least premeditation. In nine cases out of ten the Negro 
rapist is influenced merely by the accidental conjunction of passion and 
favorable situation. The rape of white women by Negroes is more com- 
mon in localities where there are relatively few Negroes. In the Mis- 
sissippi Delta, Negro assaults upon white women are much more rare 
than their assaults upon the women of their own race.® 

in reference to the crime of rape Shaler says: 

“It is not yet evident that the Negro is more apt to be guilty of 
such outrages than the Aryan of the same low social position. More- 
over, in judging the quality of the African in this regard we have to 
bear in mind the fact that in our own race for many centuries the men 
known to have been guilty of this offense have been summarily dealt 
with, so that their evil blood has been removed from the stock. We 
may criticize our ancestors as brutal, but their condign punishment of 
such malefactors doubtless helped to elevate the race by a very effective 
process of selection. Considering that the Negro race has not passed 
through this process of purification, and that he is now in a most un- 
happy position, with his ancient external supports withdrawn and with no 
inheritances strong enough to take their place, he has not done so badly. 
A fair assessment of the situation leads to the conviction that morally 
he is hopeful material for use in our society.” 1° 

In reference to Negro crime generally the same author says: 


*Stone, op. cit., pp. 94, 97. 
* The Neighbor, p. 149. 


DEE NEGRO UASTARVIOUATORIOE PH LAW 119 


“It is my conviction, based on much study of the black people, that 
a considerable part of them will be found very well fitted for the more 
serious duties of citizenship, and that, with fit help in education and in- 
centive, somewhere near half of them can be uplifted to a plane where 
they will contribute to the quality of the state. Of the remainder, the 
most that can be hoped is that they will make useful laborers. In this 
lower group there is a remnant, probably not five per cent of the whole 
black population, which retains so much of the primitive brute that it 
cannot be turned to account. It is from this very small part of the folk 
that comes the class of outrages which constitute the real menace of 
the situation. It is doubtful if the proportion of this primitively brutal 
element of the Negro population exceeds much, if at all, the correspond- 
ing degenerate and otherwise base material in the whites, but it seems 
probable that it is more inclined to crimes against the person, particu- 
larly to assaults on women. Naturally these atrocities excite rage, but 
this is often visited unreasonably on the unoffending body of the blacks, 
who, if in close social contact with the whites, are, as is well proved 
by the history of the people in slavery, no more given to such offenses 
than those of our own race. It would be quite as reasonable to condemn 
the English stock for the offenses of its criminals as to condemn the 
Negroes as a whole for such crimes, which probably do not occur in 
one in ten thousand of that people, and in only the lowest part of the 
very mixed stock. Here, as in our own race, this class of malefactors 
should be weeded out. There is good reason why assailants of women 
should receive the highest punishment of the law,—that they may not 
propagate their kind ; but there is no reason whatever for allowing these 
miscreants to prejudice our conduct towards a valuable body of folk 
who are akin to them only in the color of their skins.” ™ 

Better training of the Negro’s head and hand will go far to reduce 
his volume of crime. A Virginia lawyer said before a Hampton Negro 
Conference: 

“During my nine years’ practice at the bar, I cannot recall one case 
where any Negro of fair intelligence committed a crime. Of 176 pris- 
oners in the city jail of Richmond, not one has had a thorough education. 
Nearly all have had a smattering of learning. None are carpenters, 
bricklayers, tailors, or masters of any particular trade or calling. The 
possession of some useful trade or calling is a preventive of crime among 
Negroes. 

* Shaler, op. cit., pp. 334-6. 


120 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“Of the 2091 prisoners in the Virginia State Penitentiary on May 
I, 1909, 1736 were colored. Comparatively few possess any useful trade 


or occupation. Indeed only 384 of the whole number could read and 


write.” 1? 


"Southern Workman, Sept., 1909, p. 475. 


CHAPTER 16 
MAY NCHIING PRACT Ir TN@ Trot) Ue 


Its Origin and Present Tendency—The Kinds of Crime Which Provoke Lynch- 
ings—Decline in Cases of Rape and in Number of Lynchings—Effort to 
Repress Lynchings by Educating Public Sentiment and by Raising the 
Cultural Status of Both Races 


| Ea the punishment of serious crimes such as rape or homicide, the 
white mob in the South has frequently resorted to lynching. The 
habit of lynching in the South, as in the West, has grown out of the 
scattered nature of the population, and the remoteness of the average 
citizen from the arm of the law. In a big city one’s first thought, upon 
witnessing or hearing of a serious crime, is to call for the police. In 
the scattered population of rural regions where there is no police, and 
the nearest sheriff is perhaps fifty miles off, one’s first impulse is to 
grab his gun and go after the criminal. The people of the South 
still live mostly scattered over vast areas or in small towns, and that is 
the chief reason why some of the people keep up the lynching habit. 
When the South comes to be made up of densely populated cities, an 
act of lynching will be as rare in the South as in any other section of 
the country. Not only is the practice of lynching favored by a sparsely 
settled country without effective police, but such a country is apt to 
have the kind of people who commit the kind of crime which provokes 
the lynchings. In regions where population is scattered and unpoliced 
there are exceptional opportunities and temptations for people criminally 
disposed, and the crimes which they commit arouse the passions of the 
good people to an extent that would be impossible in a dense population 
where the stimulation to the passions is more frequent and diversi- 
fied. The American lynching habit, we should remember, did not 
originate in the South, but rather in the West. As population pushed 
westward, it was always a little ahead of the arm of the law, and the 
settlers who had life and property to protect often found it expedient to 
deal with criminals in an extra-legal fashion. Lynching for man- 
slaughter or for horse or cattle stealing came to be very common. Ac- 


cording to Bancroft, “Out of 535 homicides which occurred in Cali- 
i2t 


122 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
fornia during the year 1855, there were but seven legal executions and 
forty-nine informal ones.” 1+ During the period when lynchings were 
common in the West they were very rare in the South. Under the 
régime of slavery in the South the Negroes were so strictly disciplined 
that they had little opportunity to commit serious crimes. Among the 
white people scattered through the Piedmont and Mountain regions there 
was much fighting and shooting, but revenge was a matter for the in- 
dividual and rarely for the mob. From 1839 to 1840 the Liberator 
mentions only one Negro who was put to death by a mob.” From 1855 
to 1856 there were only six lynchings in the South—two for rape and 
four for murder. Two of those lynched were white men—one in 
Texas for stealing Negroes and one in Missouri for poisoning a spring.® 
Collins was able to find record of only two cases of lynching in the South 
during the Civil War, and in neither case was the victim charged with 
rape.* | 
Lynchings came to be common in the South soon after the Civil 
War. They were provoked by the crimes committed by the Negro and 
by the failure of the state governments to protect the persons and prop- 
erty of the white people. During the Reconstruction period, the best 
white people being disfranchised, the government of the states fell 
into the hands of Negroes, carpet-baggers, and scalawags, and, while 
the white people were subjected to every kind of outrage, including the 
wholesale burning of their homes and barns, they had no redress through 
the law. A Negro jury would not convict Negro criminals for an 
offense against a white man. So bad was the situation in Edgefield, 
South Carolina, that the citizens passed resolutions stating that there 
was “no security for persons or property, for the Negroes and poor 
whites who act with them had a majority on every jury so that it was 
impossible to convict one of their number no matter how plain the 
evidence. And even if convicted he was promptly pardoned by the 
infamous executive, Moses. To such an extent was this carried that 
Carpenter, the Republican Judge of the circuit, announced that he 
would not permit the State to be put to the expense of trying criminals 
who were pardoned as soon as convicted.” 5 





* Quoted by Collins, The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South, 
p. 24. 

* Collins, op. cit., p. 22, 

*Thid., p. 24. 

*Thid., p. 31. 

* Editorial, St. Louis Republic, Jan. 1, 1875. 


THE LYNCHING PRACTICE IN. THE SOUTH 123 


According to statistics compiled from the New York Times for the 
three years 1871-73, there were seventy-five lynchings in that time. 
The Negro Year Book, 1912, gives the number of lynchings in 1882 as 
I14, in 1883 as 134, in 1884 as 211. The following is the record of 
lynchings in the United States since 1884, according to the Chicago 
Tribune: 


Year Whites Negroes Total 
1885 106 78 184 
1886 67 re 138 
1887 42 80 122 
1888 47 95 142 
1889 81 95 176 
1890 37 go 127 
1891 71 121 192 
1892 100 155 255 
1893 46 154 200 
1894 50 134 190 
1895 59 112 TAI 
1896 51 80 131 
1897 A4 122 166 
1898 25 102 127 
1899 28 84 107 
1900 8 107 115 
IgOl 28 107 135 
1902 10 86 96 
1903 18 86 104 
1904 4 83 87 
1905 5 61 66 
1906 8 64 72 
1907 3 60 63 
1908 a 93 100 
1909 14 73 87 
1910 9 65 74 
IQII 8 63 ay 
IQI2 4 60 64 
1913 I 51 52 
IQI4 3 49 52 
1915 13 54 67 
1916 4 50 54 


124 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 








Year Whites Negroes Total 
IQI7 2 36 38 
1918 4 60 64 
1919 7 76 83 
1920 8 53 61 
elk 5 59 64 
1922 6 51 57 
1923 4 29 33 
1924 O 16 16 
Total L038 Wiles, TO5iiW Ceo 


The figures show that while the number of lynchings has steadily 
declined the proportion of Negro victims has steadily increased. Of 
these 4,203 lynchings only sixty white victims and only 802 Negro 
victims were charged with rape or attempted rape. Four-fifths of the 
lynchings were for causes other than rape. 

The states ranking highest in total lynchings for the period 1889- 
1924 are as follows: 


Georgia 431 
Mississippi 400 
Louisiana 286 
Texas 279 
Alabama 266 
Florida 207 


The falling off in the number of rapes and also in the number of 
lynchings speaks well for the moral progress of both the Negroes and 
the whites. 

Frank Tannenbaum thinks that lynching is the outcome of the 
monotonous and dull life of the people of the rural districts and small 
towns. In Northern and Western towns the people have more varied 
and satisfying interests. They are more literate, have more libraries, 
and read more; they have better roads and have more opportunities 
for getting together. In the South the people of the towns are more 
isolated, more illiterate, read less, and see less of the world. ‘It is 
this dead monotony which makes occasional lynching possible... . 
The white people are as much the victim of the lynching—morally, 
probably more so, as is the poor negro who is burned. They are 
starved emotionally. They desperately crave some excitement, some 


THE LYNCHING* PRACTICHAING THE SOUTH 125 


interest, some passionate outburst. People who live a full and varied 
life do not need such sudden and passionate compensations; but those 

whose daily round never varies, whose most constant state is boredom, 
- must find some outlet or emotional distortion. 

“Something happens; a rumor is spread about town that a crime 
has been committed. The emotions seize upon this, other people are 
in.a state of frenzy before they know what has taken possession of 
them. Their thwarted impulses become the master of the situation. 
The emotional grip is unrelenting. Men and women are transported 
from a state of comparative peace into one of intense excitement. The 
lynching takes place not because the people enjoy it, but because the 
passions, the shouting, the running, the yelling, all conspire to give 
the starved emotions a full day of play. What happens is that in- 
stead of planning a lynching for the sake of the excitement the ex- 
citement determines the lynching, and the people who commit it are 
the victims. . . . The outburst victimizes the population, and is only 
a cruel compensation for many months of starved existence.” ° 

The Tennessee Law and Order League, under the leadership of Dr. 
Edwin Mims of Vanderbilt University, and the Mississippi Welfare 
League, directed by Mr. J. C. Wilson, Mr. Alfred Stone, and Senator 
Percy, have done much in the way of arousing interest in behalf of 
suppressing mobs and bringing about a better administration of law. 

Several Southern states have passed laws especially designed to 
suppress lynching. In 1920 Alabama passed a law empowering the 
Governor to employ a special force of not over thirty men as state 
law enforcement officers, vested with the authority of sheriffs, whose 
duty is to suppress mobs and bring members of mobs to justice. 

A Kentucky law of 1920 makes the penalty for lynching death or 
life imprisonment, and authorizes the Governor to remove from office 
any officer who permits a prisoner to be taken from his custody by a 
mob. 

An act of the North Carolina Legislature of I92I1 empowers a 
judge before whom a criminal is indicted to transfer the trial to an- 
other county. 

In 1921 West Virginia passed a law making participation in a 
mob equivalent to murder and imposing a fine of $5,000 on any county 
in which a lynching occurs. The anti-lynch law of South Carolina 
makes liable to damages any county in which any citizen is injured 
in life or property by a mob. 


* Tannenbaum, Darker Phases of the South, p. 26. 


126 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
SSG AO, NA ee A RII Oe ORR 

As an evidence that the South is moving in the direction of better 
law-enforcement, the following facts should be noted. According to 
the records compiled by the Department of Research of Tuskegee 
Institute there were sixty-four instances in 1921 in which officers of 
the law prevented lynchings in the Southern states. In six instances 
armed forces were used to repel mobs. In Kentucky, in 1920, the 
state troops fired into a lynching mob and killed several white par- 
ticipants. 

It is also to be noted that persons guilty of mob action are being 
more frequently convicted and punished. In 1921, four men in Wayne 
County, North Carolina, were convicted of mob action and sentenced 
to four years in prison. At Jonesboro, Tennessee, fourteen men were 
indicted for storming a jail and three were convicted and sentenced 
to prison for three years. At Houston, Virginia, four men were in- 
dicted for attempting to take a prisoner from jail. One of them was 
sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of $5,000. 

In South Carolina, the widow of a Negro whe had been lynched 
brought suit against the county in which the lynching occurred and 
was awarded a verdict of $2,000 damages. 

The fact that lynching is on the decline, and that more effective 
laws are being enacted to curb the mob is, of course, gratifying, but 
this fact should not lead us to view the problem of lynching with 
complacency. The number and character of the lynchings which con- 
tinue to take place constitute the greatest blot on the character of 
the American people, and especially on the character of the people of 
the Southern states where lynching is most prevalent. To a great 
extent lynching destroys the influence of the United States among 
the other nations of the world, especially in reference to moral ques- 
tions in which our nation aspires to lead. When Turkish fanaticism 
starves, exiles, or massacres Christian people in Armenia, or when 
rubber exploiters practice abominable cruelties upon the natives of the 
Congo or the Putomayo, or when Russian pogroms result in the whole- 
sale slaughter of Jews, what does our admonition or protest amount 
to, when the authorities responsible for these atrocities are able, and 
invariably do, fling back at us our barbarous record of lynching? 

Lynching is an advertisement to the world that the people of the 
United States are incapable of self-government, for no people can be 
said to have the capacity for self-government who are unable to pro- 
vide a legal redress for every wrong, or to defend the laws of their 
own making. 


THEO LYNCHING PRAGTICEVIN THE, SOUTH 127 


Lynching deters neither the Negro nor the white man from crime, 
but, by the spirit of lawlessness which it disseminates, incites more 
crime among both races. 

If there are some signs that public sentiment in our nation, or in 
any state, is awakening to the enormity of the lynching practice, the 
considerable extent to which that practice still goes on, is suf- 
ficient evidence that public sentiment is not half enough awake. In 
the Southern states the press generally speaks out strongly against 
lynching after an instance of it has occurred, and various organiza- 
tions of good people occasionally express profound indignation against 
the evil, but there is a general lack of organized propaganda directed 
to building up a public sentiment strong enough to be felt as a re- 
straining influence in every community. For illustration, I have been 
a pretty regular attendant at some Sunday service of a Southern 
church for many years, and, while I have heard denunciations of 
nearly every sin to which human nature is susceptible, I have never 
heard from the pulpit one utterance against lynching. To judge 
Southern clergymen by the themes for their sermons, one would sup- 
pose that they did not regard lynching as comparable to the sin of 
dancing, playing cards, or going to a theater. It may be that some 
clergymen have thundered against lynching, and I have no doubt that 
clergymen generally, like other good people in the South, condemn the 
practice and desire to see it stamped out, but my observation con- 
vinces me that they have not yet visualized lynching as a vital problem. 

There ought to be a civic organization in every Southern city, 
and this, in cooperation with the churches, schools, and clubs, should 
launch periodic propaganda in behalf of law and order. 


CHAPTER 17 
OTHER OUTRAGES UPON NEGROES 


Assaults on Negroes by White Mobs—Destruction of Property—Expulsion from 
the Country—Influence of the Ku Klux—Race Riots 


HE white mobs, when not engaged in lynching, frequently com- 

mit outrages upon the Negro of a less drastic but equally cruel 
and unjust character. They inflict bodily injury upon him, destroy 
his property, deprive him of the opportunity to work, and in some 
cases drive him out of the country. The class of white people who 
do these wrongs to the Negro are the class who lead the lynchings. 
They are generally small landholders, tenants in rural districts and, 
in the towns, small proprietors and casual wage workers. Because 
of their low economic status they closely approximate the Negro in' 
illiteracy and standard of living, and they often find the Negro a 
competitor. The prosperity of the Negro excites their envy, and 
having to compete with him arouses their resentment. They pride 
themselves on their antipathy to the Negro, vie with each other in 
the number of grievances they have against him, and are ever ready 
to settle matters by the methods of the bully. 

To mention a few illustrations: In a certain county in Georgia 
the white people, who did not want a Negro neighbor, wrote a letter 
to the white owner of the tenant house saying, “You had better keep 
negroes out of this house of yours; if you don’t everything you have 
got will be burned down to the ground.” + In another county a white 
mob sent a note to the foreman of a gang of Negro railway workers, 
stating: “that if they (the Negroes) continued to work, while white 
men wanted jobs, they (the foreman and Negroes) would be mobbed.” ? 

In many of the Mountain counties of the South, where slavery 
has never existed, the white people have tried to keep the Negroes out 
entirely. In several instances where Negroes have invaded these 
counties the white mob has burnt their churches, schools, and homes.? 


*Dorsey’s pamphlet, sec. C. 
* Idem. 
* Idem. 
128 


OTHER OUTRAGES UPON NEGROES 129 





The usual procedure of the whites is to notify the Negroes to leave 
the county in ten days, and if they do not heed the notice the mob 
gathers and runs them out.* 

The white people of the class above mentioned do not always 
wait to organize a mob, but as individuals commit outrages upon the 
Negroes with and without provocation. For example, in a Georgia 
county an envious white man caused his Negro neighbor to be falsely 
arrested, and, together with his two educated daughters, to be brutally 
beaten and cuffed by a sheriff, on a charge of trespass. The Negro 
was a prosperous farmer, and, during the World War, he and his 
family of twelve children purchased approximately $1,000 worth of 
Liberty Bonds and Thrift Stamps, and he headed an organization which 
purchased $10,000 in Liberty Bonds. The white man who had the 
Negro arrested could neither read nor write, and, when he heard of 
the Negro’s generous subscriptions to the war fund, he remarked: 
“°E’s getting too damned prosperous and biggity for a nigger.”> In 
another county in Georgia, a Negro witness in a peonage case was 
killed by a son of the white farmer against whom the Negro had 
testified. A boy fishing found the body of the Negro in a creek.® 

The recent development of the new Ku Klux Klan which has spread 
over the entire United States, and which now seems to be dying a 
natural death, does not appear to have been greatly concerned with 
the Negro. Its main object seems to have been to maintain in the 
United States the dominance of the Protestant type of citizen. The 
worst that can be said of its influence in the South is that it has 
intensified race prejudice among a class of people who already have 
too much of it. 

Race riots, as distinguished from lynchings, are violent outbreaks 
in which one or both races develop the mob spirit. A single individual 
may initiate the disturbance, but the outcome is the assembling of 
angry groups of both races and their commission of crimes against 
each other. 

The riot of greatest magnitude in the South during the past twenty- 
five years was the so-called Atlanta riot of 1906. According to a 
Northern man’s version of it, “A lame boot-black, an inoffensive, in- 
dustrious boy, at that moment actually at work shining a man’s shoes, 
was dragged out and cuffed, kicked and beaten to death in the street. 


*Tbid., sec. C. 


5 Ibid., sec. D. 
* Tbid., sec. D. 


130 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





Another young Negro was chased and stabbed to death with jack- 
knives in the most unspeakable, horrible manner. The mob entered 
barber shops where respectable Negro men were at work shaving 
white customers, pulled them away from their chairs and beat them. 
Cars were stopped and inoffensive Negroes were thrown through the 
windows or dragged out and beaten. They demolished Negro barber 
shops and restaurants and robbed stores kept by white men.’* Not 
a criminal was touched by the riot. Its victims were all law-abiding 
and industrious citizens. Two white men and ten colored men were 
killed, and ten white men and sixty colored men injured.® 

Among the riots which have eccurred in the South since the World 
War the following are the more outstanding: 

A riot at Charleston, South Carolina, May 10, 1919, between 
Negroes and sailors from the Naval Training Station grew out of 
the shooting of a sailor by a Negro. The casualties were two Negroes 
killed and about twenty Negroes and eight sailors wounded. 

On July 11, 1919, a riot at Longview, Texas, between whites and 
Negroes resulted in the wounding of four white men and the burn- 
ing of a number of Negro residences. The riot grew out of the effort 
of some white men to punish a Negro school-teacher who was accused 
of the publication in a Negro newspaper of statements derogatory to a 
young white woman concerning whom a Negro had been lynched some 
weeks previous. 

On August 30 and 31, 1919, a riot at Knoxville, Tennessee, between 
Negroes and whites resulted in the killing of one Negro and one offi- 
cer of the National Guardsmen, and the wounding of six Negroes 
and seven whites. The rioting began with the storming of the jail 
to get a Negro accused of murdering a white woman. The jail was 
wrecked and all of the white prisoners, sixteen in number, were re- 
leased. The Negro prisoner had been removed for safety to another 
county, but the mob invaded the Negro quarter, where several clashes 
without fatality occurred. 

In Washington, D. C., July 19-23, 1919, there occurred a very serious 
riot in which three Negroes and four whites were killed and some 
thirty or more people wounded. It started as a result of reported 
attacks of Negroes on white women. On the morning of July 19 the 
Washington Témes announced, “The sixth attack by Negroes on white 
women during the last four weeks,” etcetera. It seems that certain 


"Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 15. 
* Ibid., p. 55. 


OTHER OUTRAGES UPON NEGROES 131 


newspapers reported as news, giving no details of names or locality, 
the wild rumors picked up from the gossip of the streets. 

A riot at Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 31 and June I, 1921, resulted in 
the killing of about ten whites and twenty-one Negroes and the burn- 
ing of a whole section of Negro residences. The riot began with 
the assembling of a number of armed Negroes at the county jail in 
response to a rumor that a mob of white people was going to lynch a 
Negro prisoner charged with assault upon a white woman. The 
assembling of the Negroes was the signal for an outpouring of the 
whites who, after driving the Negroes away, followed them to their 
residence quarter and set fire to their homes. It is commonly be- 
lieved that the riot would not have occurred but for an inflammatory 
speech made in Tulsa prior to the riot by a representative of the 
National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People. 


CHAPTER 18 
THE PEONAGE OF NEGROES 


Its Origin—Character and Extent of It—Laws Which Encourage Peonage—The 
Remedy—General Extent of Outrages upon the Negro—What the White 
People Are Doing and Should Do to Give the Negro a Square Deal 


HE term peonage as used in the South has grown out of a court 

practice which was solely humanitarian in its motive and was 
designed especially to favor Negro offenders. When white people 
are fined for a minor offense they usually are able to raise the 
money from some relative or friend and thus avoid going to jail. In 
order to give the Negro an equal opportunity to escape a jail sen- 
tence, laws were made which provided that persons unable to pay a 
fine might be bound out or bailed to any one who would pay the 
fine. Under these laws Negro offenders have been bailed to any man 
who needed their labor, and have been deprived of their freedom until 
the fine was worked out. Although the kind of Negroes who have 
to be bailed are not the best workers, and, while the white people who 
do the bailing are not of the best type of farmers, perhaps nine-tenths 
of the cases of bailing are terminated according to agreement and 
without injustice to the bailee. In a great many cases the white man 
who pays the fine is a friend of the Negro and allows him his free- 
dom and trusts him to repay the amount of the fine when convenient 
or at a specified date. Where abuses have arisen from this bailing 
process they have been neither designed nor foreseen. 

But a practice of this kind, by its very nature, offers the oppor- 
tunity for a class of unprincipled white men to exploit the Negro, 
and, in the last twenty-five years, many instances of such exploita- 
tion have come to light, accompanied in some cases by unbelievable 
cruelties, and even by murder of the Negro victims. In a pamphlet 
issued by Governor Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia in 1921, there are 
enumerated twelve such cases of peonage. The worst case in the 
history of the system came to light in the spring of 1921, when 
John S. Williams, a planter in Jasper County, Georgia, was indicted 
for the wholesale murder of Negro men whom he had held in peonage. 

132 


THE PEONAGE OF NEGROES ified 





He had made a practice of bailing out prisoners from the Atlanta 
and Macon stockades and putting them to work on his plantation. 
Here he retained them unlawfully, beat them unmercifully, and, to 
prevent the victim from telling on him, began to put them to death 
and hide their corpses. The trial brought out the fact that eleven 
Negroes had been done to death on the Williams plantation; six of 
them had been thrown into a river and five buried on the plantation. 
The farm boss, a Negro, Clyde Manning, confessed that, under the 
directions of Williams, he had done most of the killing. The trial 
attracted national attention and ended in the sentencing of Williams 
and Manning to life imprisonment. 

Peonage cases have been most common perhaps in Georgia, but 
even in that state they have come to light in only a few counties. 
The general run of people in the cities and rural districts of Georgia 
have been as indignant and as much amazed over the story of peon- 
age cases as people could have been in any part of the country, and, 
under the leadership of Governor Dorsey, have made a determined 
effort to stamp it out. 

There is no certain way of uprooting peonage except by repealing 
the laws which permit a person unable to pay a fine to be bailed out. 
This might be a hardship on the impecunious offender in compelling 
him to go to prison for minor offenses, but it is better that he go 
to prison than become a slave. To be bound to involuntary servitude 
to a private citizen, under whatever pretext, is to become in reality a 
slave, and no such servitude should be tolerated in any civilized coun- 
try. In lieu of the bailing-out laws, the Southern states should adopt 
the French policy of allowing impecunious offenders to pay their 
fines by their free labor and earnings within a specified time, and ap- 
pointing a probation officer to assist them in finding work and to see 
that they pay the fines, 

A Georgia law? under which Negroes could be arrested and con- 
victed upon the charge of fraudulent intent in violating any labor 
contract has enabled white scoundrels to perpetrate many outrages upon 
Negro tenants and wage workers. For example, a white man in a 
county in Georgia had a Negro boy arrested for failing to comply 
with his contract. The boy had been drafted for service in the United 
States Army and had served fifteen months, and he pleaded that 
his service caused him to break his contract. A well-to-do Negro 
farmer was in the act of signing the boy’s bond, which the sheriff 

*Code Section, pp. 715-16. 


134 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





was willing to accept, when the white accuser in a rage said, “No 
nigger shall help another nigger to beat me out of my money,” and 
fired two shots into the Negro farmer, who, however, recovered from 
the wounds. The white culprit was convicted of “shooting at an- 
other,” and sentenced to six months in jail or a fine of $300. Under 
this obnoxious law, any number of Negroes may be arrested and jailed 
upon a charge of violating the smallest details of a civil contract. 
Negroes, fearing arrest, may be intimidated into remaining in the 
service of white men under onerous terms which the contract does 
not justify. The law has contributed greatly to the perpetuation of 
peonage. Governor Dorsey recommended the repeal of this law which 
certainly has no place on the statute books of a civilized people, but 
up to the present time (1926) it has not been repealed. 

The injustices and outrages which the Negroes have suffered in 
various localities in the South have been the outcome partly of un- 
avoidable and partly of avoidable conditions. The isolation of the 
people by reason of their distribution in small towns and scattered 
rural homesteads has not been favorable to an effective police system 
or to respect for law, and has been unfavorable to the dissemination 
of education and enlightenment. Southern legislatures have been 
dominated by a capitalist class of small farmers, and the laws have 
been made in the interest of that class with scant recognition of the 
rights of the tenant or wage worker. However, under the wisest 
system of laws it would have been impossible in the South, as it has 
been impossible in every other part of the world, to prevent more 
or less exploitation of the weak and defenseless class by the preda- 
tory element of the population. The presence of a large population 
of impecunious and ignorant Negroes offers exceptional opportunity 
for any unprincipled white man to take advantage of them, and, un- 
fortunately for the Negro, the number of unprincipled white men has 
not been too few. But, as deplorable as this fact is, there is no 
reason for believing that the Negroes of the South have been more 
imposed upon than a similar class of poor people in any other part 
of the world. When all of the cases of injustice to the Negro are 
summed up, the fact stands out that they are a small fraction of the 
9,000,000 Negroes who live in the South. In any consideration of 
the wrongs inflicted upon the Negro it is proper to bear in mind the 
millions who not only get a square deal but receive generous treat- 
ment and a protecting hand. In every community in the South there 
are innumerable white people who not only disdain to take advantage 


THE PEONAGE OF NEGROES 135 


of the Negro but go out of their way to help him and befriend him. 
They often sell him property, lend him money, and make concessions 
to him upon terms which they would not make to a white man. They 
contribute generously to build his churches. They feed him when 
he is hungry, clothe him when he is naked, and visit him when he is 
sick or in prison. 

A highly educated Northern-born Negro who spent a part of his 
life in the South says: “It is in traveling, chiefly, that a Negro 
meets with his most discouraging treatment in the South. In the 
communities where they live, self-respecting Negroes are usually 
better treated in the South than in the North. They are trusted, em- 
ployed, encouraged, advised and helped forward in every practical 
way; and there is often a sincere cordiality, even love, existing be- 
tween the races which is difficult to describe. An industrious, re- 
spectable Negro in the South (particularly if he is a minister) may 
borrow any reasonable amount of money from a bank on his own 
mere word, or note, without other security. And any imputation 
against his character is taken up by white men who know him as a 
personal affront. Southern white men will stand by and cooperate 
with Northern Negroes who go South, without ‘big-headedness,’ to 
build up their own people; and to do right. I shall never forget the 
good white people of Lexington, Virginia, where | pastored a coloured 
church, who stood by me in my work, shaming refractory spirits in 
my congregation, and seeing that I was paid; and who, when I left, 
sent with me their blessings and written commendations. And the 
same was true of the whites of Westmoreland County, Virginia, where 
I also pastored a church. The experiences of hundreds of coloured 
ministers and leaders in the South would corroborate mine. 

“At this period of its development, conditions are still far from 
ideal for my people in the South. But this is also becoming more 
and more true in the North, where, in the larger cities, the idle Negro, 
shut out from the commonest employment and living more uncer- 
tainly than a rat, is a sight for men and gods to pity—or despise! 
The North judges the South too much by its ‘fire-eaters,’ and not 
enough by its peaceful, kind hearts who are helping my people, and 
who are loved of them. I have never had an unkind word spoken to 
me in the South by a white man who knew me personally.” ? 

But the Southern whites have by no means done as much as they 
could or should have done to help and protect their untutored dark 


*Corrothers, In Spite of the Handicap, p. 122. 


136 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


population. The chief reason, and one not at all appreciated out- 
side of the South, for the bad laws and for all of the sufferings 
inflicted upon the Negro in the Southern states, is the presence in 
the population of a large element of raw, uneducated, white people, 
the product of isolation. And the existence of this large element in 
the population is not altogether due to callousness on the part of 
the more enlightened class. It is the inevitable result of the poverty 
and scattered nature of the population, rendering difficult the financ- 
ing of schools or the location of them within reach of the people. 
In the effort to uplift these backward whites the South has dis- 
tributed its state educational funds according to illiteracy, and is now 
in various sections conducting night schools, and sending teachers 
from house to house, to teach the aged people to read and write. 
Thanks to her increasing wealth, the South is now making wonder- 
ful strides in eliminating ignorance by good schools and in eliminating 
isolation by good highways. The problem of uplifting the back- 
ward whites and blacks, and of freeing them from the vices and 
crimes which proceed from their darkened minds, has been a difficult 
one, and will yet require much wisdom and heavy sacrifices before 
it is solved. Ray Stannard Baker, after his study of conditions in 
the South, was perhaps not too generous in saying this: “I came 
away from the South deeply impressed with two things: That the 
South is making as good progress in overcoming its peculiar forms 
of lawlessness as the North is making in overcoming its peculiar 
forms.” ® 
* Following the Color Line, p. 201. 


CHARTER ETO 
THE NEGRO BEFORE SOUTHERN COURTS 


How the Negro Fares When He Commits Crime against the Whites and When 
the Whites Commit Crime against Him—White Friends of the Negro in 
Court—Frequent Rendering of Signal Justice to the Negro by White Juries 


N regard to the probability of the Negro’s getting justice in the 

Southern courts, one thing may be said with absolute certainty: 
Neither the Negro in the South nor the impecunious white men in 
the North, nor in other quarters of the earth, has an equal chance 
with the rich and powerful class in the matter of litigation. In this 
respect the South, like every other section, stands condemned, but 
it is not true, as commonly alleged, that the Negro suffers any in- 
justice in the Southern courts that is not suffered everywhere else by 
a similar impecunious class of people. 

In the matter of homicide the Negro is apt to receive a severer 
verdict than the white man, but this is equally true in any other part 
of the United States. Judge Pam of Chicago says that “where a 
white man will be found guilty of manslaughter, a colored man will 
be found guilty of murder.” ? 

In case of indictments for murder, while the Negro, if guilty, is 
more apt to be convicted than a guilty white man, an innocent Negro 
is not more apt to be convicted than an innocent white man. 

“In a county in Mississippi,” says Stone, “in which the Negroes 
outnumber the whites by nine to one, I have seen a Negro tried by a 
white jury for the killing of a white man, and walk out of the court 
room free and without molestation, and the incident excited no word 
of comment or surprise.” ? 

In all cases of offenses of white men against Negroes the juries 
are reluctant to bring in a verdict of conviction, except in the mild- 
est form, although there are notable exceptions to this rule where 
the white criminal is especially culpable. Governor Dorsey instances 
the case of a white man in Georgia who was convicted of rape upon 

* Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 353. 

* Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 73. 

137 


138 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





a Negro woman and sentenced to twelve months in the penitentiary.* 
In this reluctance of juries to convict white men for offenses against 
the Negro, the South is not peculiar. In every country, and in every 
state of the United States, where colored and white people constitute 
elements of the population, the race prejudice operates against which- 
ever race is in the minority. An ex-prime minister of Australia says 
that “juries would not bring in verdicts against defendants accused 
of acts of violence against the Chinese.” * It is notorious in Haiti 
that white men receive no shadow of justice in the courts.® 

It is often charged that the discrimination against the Negro in 
the South is due to the fact that the juries are all made up of white 
men. This is true to some extent, but not any more true in the 
South than in the North. It is axiomatic that in any country or 
in any of our states the race which dominates the government also 
controls the jury. The supposition that the Negro in the North 
has jury privileges equal to that of the white man is a figment of 
the imagination. To be sure, Negroes sometimes sit in the jury-box in 
a Northern state in cases of minor importance, but let any white 
man be indicted for a serious offense and the Negro stands no more 
chance of getting on the jury in Massachusetts or Illinois than in 
South Carolina or Mississippi. Judge Pam of Chicago says, that, 
“In a murder case lawyers will challenge a Negro; and if there were 
a colored man in the box he would soon be put out.”® Judge Tom- 
son of the same city says, “Take for example a gun case, with twelve 
men in the box, and one a colored man, and suppose that the lawyer 
challenged the Negro. If you went to the lawyer and said, ‘Give 
me your reason?’ I don’t think he would give you any reason.” 7 

In all criminal indictments below the rank of felony, I doubt if, 
upon the whole, the Negroes in the South are more severely dealt 
with than the whites; and I am quite sure that in all minor crimes 
the Negro in the South receives a consideration at the hands of the 
courts which no poor white class of people receive in any part of the 
world. 

Judge Stevenson of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has analyzed 
19,000 court cases in that city collected by him in his former capacity 


*Dorsey’s pamphlet, sec. D. 

*“Australia’s Way with Asiatics,” Outlook, Dec., 1924, p. 223. 
*St. John, The Black Republic, p. 146. 

“Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 352. 
"Idem. 


THE NEGRO BEFORE SOUTHERN COURTS 139 


of prosecuting attorney. Two-thirds of the cases concerned Negroes, 
and one-third concerned whites. He says: 

“In the amount of fine and length of sentence the advantage ap- 
pears to be altogether with the Negro. The average fine of the 
white convict is $18.05; of the Negro $14.55, a difference of $3.50 
in favor of the Negro. The average term of imprisonment of the 
white convict is 86.04 days, of the Negro 79.37 days, a difference 
of 6.67 days in favor of the Negro. The white man convicted of 
gambling is fined about twice as much as the Negro, and, if imprisoned, 
his sentence is considerably longer. The fine of the white person con- 
victed of violating the liquor laws is nearly twice that of the Negro 
convicted of the same kind of offense. 

“It appears that, upon the whole, 49.3 per cent of whites and 46.7 
per cent of Negroes are fined, which is a difference of 2.6 per cent 
in favor of the white, if it be leniency in the court to fine rather than 
imprison. . . . It is common knowledge that a much larger percent- 
age of Negroes than whites have to be sentenced for non-payment of 
fine or costs. When a deduction for this is made, the percentage of 
Negroes sentenced to terms of imprisonment will be found to be not 
much, if any, more than the percentage of whites sentenced.” 

In the matter of crimes against property, the white people who are 
the victims are generally very charitable towards the Negroes, and 
in thousands of instances make no complaint of the crime. I have 
known many cases where Negro servants have stolen clothing, jewelry, 
and other valuable household property and no effort was made to 
prosecute them. The white people try to recover the property which 
has been stolen, and, if they do recover it, the servant is often re- 
tained in the same household; if the property is not, and cannot be 
recovered, the white people feel that they have nothing to gain by 
prosecuting the servant, and often, out of sympathy for him or her, 
or appreciation of his or her good traits, would regret to see the 
guilty one prosecuted. Furthermore, cases are very common in which 
white people who have been the victims of Negro crime have spent 
time and money to prevent the Negro culprit from being arrested 
or punished. For instance, while I was living in Charlotte, North 
Carolina, a Negro girl about sixteen years old, employed by us as 
a house maid, forged my sister’s name to a check, and was caught 
in the act of trying to cash it at the bank. The teller of the bank 
called in a policeman and had the girl put in jail. The girl was 
well educated for her age; she had been regularly to school, and was 


140 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


very bright and capable as a servant. We all liked her, and were 
shocked and grieved to find her in jail. We looked upon this girl’s 
crime as a youthful indiscretion and we all busied ourselves with 
the solicitor and the judge to secure her discharge. 

Most white people in the South have known some Negroes for a 
long time and feel a deep attachment to them in spite of any and 
all of their faults, and when any one of them gets into the court 
their white friends frequently intercede to get them out. Only last 
summer, I was told by my brother-in-law, Judge W. F. Harding of 
North Carolina, how he and his cousin, a lawyer, had been work- 
ing strenuously, and of course without pay, to save from punishment 
a Negro woman who had attacked with an axe a police officer holding 
a search-warrant. Judge Harding happened to be a friend of a 
family for whom the Negro woman had once worked, and they were 
devoted to her and did not want her punished. I could fill a book 
with similar instances in which the white people have befriended 
the Negro in the courts. 

A Northern man who was in the South studying the Negro prob- 
lem said, 

“One of the things that I couldn’t at first understand in some of 
the courts I visited was the presence of so many white men to stand 
sponsor for the Negroes who had committed various offenses.” ® 

In civil litigation in the South, strange to say, the Negro in many 
cases has the advantage over the white man. If a white man cheats 
or takes advantage of a Negro the jurymen generally have such a 
contempt for the white offender that they are inclined to give him 
all that the law allows; whereas, if a Negro cheats or gets the better 
of a white man, the jurymen generally take the view that any white 
man who lets a Negro get the better of him is deserving of little 
consideration, and are inclined to favor the Negro or let him off 
lightly. In all civil matters I think that the Negro fares as well 
in the courts as the whites. The following case, reported in the States- 
ville, North Carolina, Landmark, is an illustration: 

“The jury’s verdict in the Ross will case in Union county is one 
of many similar instances in which the gratifying fact stands out 
that white juries can and do disregard race prejudice. Maggie Ross, 
a white woman possessed of large estate, lived in retirement and it 
is alleged that she permitted her negro servants unusual privileges 

* Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 96. 


THE NEGRO BEFORE SOUTHERN COURTS 141 


in her home. At her death it was found that she had willed the 
bulk of her estate to three negroes. Various bequests were made 
to churches, missions and charities (the orphanage at Barium Springs, 
$2,000) and small amounts were given to various white persons, but 
the bulk of the estate of 1,500 acres of valuable farming lands 
and about $35,000 in cash was left to a negro man and his daughter 
and granddaughter. The white woman had no near kin, but as soon 
as her will was made public second and third cousins and others 
farther removed, to the number of 109, entered suit to set aside the 
will on the ground that Maggie Ross was not mentally competent to 
make a will and that she was unduly influenced by the negroes who 
were the beneficiaries. Many witnesses expressed the opinion that 
she was not mentally competent to make a will, and when pinned 
down admitted that the opinion was based on the fact that she left her 
property to the negroes. 

“That was a natural thought, and that with the natural race feel- 
ing and the feeling that it was not best all ’round for so much valu- 
able property to pass from the white race by gift into the hands of 
negroes, made a strong case to break the will. True, the white bene- 
ficiaries employed counsel and gave their aid and influence against 
the effort to set aside the will, but most of these beneficiaries are 
outside of Union county. Their local influence would be small, 
while a jury of white Union county citizens would not be expected 
to look with favor on 1,500 acres of valuable Union county land pass- 
ing into the hands of negroes, their heirs and assigns, for all time. 

“But after a hard-fought contest of 15 days it took that Union 
county jury just 45 minutes to agree that Maggie Ross knew what 
she was doing when she made her will; that she wanted the negroes 
to have the property and she was entirely within her rights when 
she gave it to them. 

“That is by no means an unusual verdict, either, from the point of 
race relationship. Not so many years ago a white jury, in Iredell 
Superior court, took the word of an old colored man against that 
of two white men—men of property and standing as men of affairs 
in their community—in a matter involving the ownership of land. 
There are cases, of course, where passions are aroused, when race 
feeling sways judgment. But when the facts are set out in an atmos- 
phere free from passion, in the clear light of justice, the negro will 
get his rights before the average Southern jury.” 


142 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


H. B. Adams, a brother-in-law of the author of this book, drew 
the will which the kin of Maggie Ross sought to break, and his son 
informs the author that the Negro beneficiaries of the will received 
“in round numbers one hundred thousand dollars.” 


CHAPTERRe26 
THEYNEGRO: ASAT CONVICT 


Various Systems of Employing the Convicts—the Lease or Contract System— 
The State Farm System—The Chain-gang—Advantages and Drawbacks of 
the Several Systems—Progress of the South in Solving the Problem of 
Convict Labor 


S from one-half to two-thirds of the inmates of the penal in- 
stitutions in the South are Negroes, it would seem to be in order 
to give some account of these institutions. 

First, there are state penitentiaries, consisting of one large build- 
ing where men are confined who have committed serious crimes. Dur- 
ing the past forty years these institutions have gradually declined 
in the number of inmates, due to the increasing practice of employ- 
ing convicts outside of prison walls. In some states the penitentiaries 
have come to be used only for the criminal insane, and a small 
number of long-term offenders who are not capable of arduous manual 
labor. The maintenance of a large number of convicts within prison 
walls has been found by experience to be burdensome to the state 
because of the difficulty of putting them to any kind of work which 
would yield a profit. 

Second, as a means of relieving the state of the necessity of 
appropriating money for the annual deficit incurred by the state peni- 
tentiaries, the policy was adopted of hiring out convicts under contract 
or lease to private individuals or corporations for work of various 
kinds in and outside of the penitentiary walls. By the terms of the 
contract the state received so much per capita for the labor of each 
convict, and sometimes furnished an overseer. Convicts so contracted 
for have been used in North Carolina to build railroads, in South 
Carolina to work in a cotton factory or on private farms, in Virginia 
to work in a shoe factory, in Alabama to work in mines and saw- 
mills, in Georgia to work in lumber camps and brickyards, and in 
Florida to work in the phosphate beds and in turpentine stills. 

This lease system has been very profitable to the states, but has 
never been anything but an evil from the viewpoint of the welfare 

143 


144 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





of the convict. The health of the convicts has been generally neg- 
lected, resulting in a high mortality, and the discipline of the con- 
victs has often been brutal. So many evils have grown out of this 
system that the states, one by one, have abolished it. It still lingers 
in Alabama, however, where the law abolishing it is not operative 
until 1927. 

Third, the county governments in a great many instances have 
adopted what has come to be known as the chain-gang system or con- 
vict camp system. As the states adopted the contract and lease sys- 
tem to avoid the heavy expense of long-term offenders in the peni- 
tentiary, so the county governments adopted the chain-gang system 
to avoid the heavy expense of short-term offenders committed to the 
county jail. Instead of feeding idle men for thirty or sixty days in 
jail the county authorities now employ the offenders in work upon the 
public roads. Since these offenders have to work in the open coun- 
try and sleep in camps, it has been necessary to hobble some of them 
with chains, and hence the name chain-gang or convict camp. 

The camps, of course, change their location frequently. In some 
states, for convenience in moving, the convicts sleep in cages vary- 
ing in length from sixteen to twenty feet which stand on wheels, 
not unlike the circus cages for animals. Triple-deck beds on each 
side of the cage accommodate about eighteen men. In other states 
the convicts sleep in tents. All, except a few trusties and the women 
who do the cooking and washing, are shackled with chains while 
they work, and sometimes also while they sleep. 

From the standpoint of economy to the state, the employment of 
convicts to work on the roads has advantages over any other employ- 
ment. The maintenance cost is borne by the county which uses the 
convicts, and from the standpoint of the county, the chain-gang is 
the cheapest means of making and keeping up good roads. 

From the standpoint of the convicts, there is little to be said in 
favor of the system. The conditions in some of the camps have been 
bad beyond belief, and have justified the severest public condemnation. 
The guards and overseers of the camps have been generally men of 
little education or standing, who were glad to find a job at from 
$40 to $60 a month which required only the ability to “cuss” and 
lean on a gun. In some cases they seem to have been men with no 
knowledge whatever of hygiene or sanitation. The bedding of the 
convicts has often been allowed to wear into tatters, and to become 
dirty and infested with vermin. Referring to one of the camps in 


THE NEGRO AS A CONVICT 145 


North Carolina, the State Board of Public Welfare said: ‘‘The method 
of disposing of the sewage is most unsanitary. The night buckets 
are emptied just behind the tent in which the prisoners sleep. This 
practice exposes men to the unpleasant odors and dangers of con- 
tracting disease.” * Bathing facilities are often lacking, and, in pro- 
viding a weekly bath in a tub, several men are sometimes permitted 
to wash in the same water. In some cases the quality of the food 
was bad and the quantity insufficient. Sick convicts sometimes suf- 
fered for days without medical attention and in the Texas camps 
instances are reported of tubercular and syphilitic convicts being al- 
lowed to work and sleep beside the uninfected.2. In North Carolina 
cases have come to light in which the convicts have been brutally 
whipped and cuffed; * like cases have come to light in South Carolina 
in spite of the fact that the constitution of that state prohibits corporal 
punishment.* 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that all of the convict 
camps are unsanitary and that the discipline in all of them is brutal. 
The abuses in the system which have been heralded abroad repre- 
sent exceptional cases which have been written up in the reports of 
state welfare organizations or legislative investigation committees. The 
fact that the abuses are being exposed indicates that efforts are being 
made to remove them. 

In my travels through the South I have visited many of these 
convict camps, and in most cases I have found them fairly sanitary 
and the treatment of the convicts lenient and humane. 

It is erroneously believed outside of the South, and especially by 
the Negro press, that the chain-gang is an institution devised solely 
for the degradation of the Negro and that only Negroes are com- 
mitted to it. The fact is that the convict camp system was designed 
solely as an economic measure, and that both whites and blacks are 
committed to it. There may be some camps in the Black Belt where 
all the convicts are Negroes, but there are many camps where white 
convicts equal in number the blacks, and I have seen convict camps 
in the Upper Piedmont and Mountain regions of the South where all 
of the convicts were white. 

The unsatisfactory experience of the state governments in employ- 


* Report, 1921, p. 108. 

? Report, Sub-Committee, Texas Legislature, 1918, p. 281. 

* Bulletins, North Carolina Board of Public Welfare, Ist quarter, 1923, p. I5. 
* Article I, sec. 79. 


146 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


ing long-term prisoners under the lease or contract system, and the 
general failure to employ them profitably within penitentiary walls, 
led to the experiment of establishing state convict farms. Beginning 
about 1886 most of the Southern states began to empty their peni- 
tentiaries of able-bodied men and to put them to work on farms. At 
present the number of these farms in each state varies from two to 
six. The success of these farms, from the economic point of view, 
varies greatly. In a few instances, where competent overseers are 
employed, they yield a revenue to the state, in most instances they 
produce barely enough to cover the cost of maintenance, and in some 
instances they operate at a loss. 

The work of convicts on the farms is not too hard, and is favorable 
to health. A resident physician, or one under contract to visit the 
farm upon call, is employed for each farm. The mortality of the 
farm convicts is much lower than that of convicts employed under 
any other system. 

In some of the states there are small county farms for short- 
term offenders, instead of the convict camp, in connection with work 
on the highways. 

Frances Kellor, who made a study of the penal institutions in the 
South in 19ot, said: 

“The South more than any other part of the country holds the 
ideal solution of the convict problem. This is the State farm. It 
is entirely feasible, is self-supporting and revenue-procuring, gives the 
state full control of convicts, removes them from unhealthful surround- 
ings, and avoids all danger of labor attacks. No other section of 
the United States is so well adapted to this system and can enter 
upon it at so little expense. It abolishes chain gangs and _ publicity 
of labor.” > 

Since these lines were written, the South has been moving in the 
direction of abolishing all lease and contract systems and concentrat- 
ing the convicts on large farms. 

A great drawback to these farms has been the working together of 
the young and old offenders, absence of a matron to supervise female 
offenders, and the lack of educational and cultural influences. 

The Southern states especially need training schools for Negro 
offenders under the age of sixteen, and reformatories for those be- 
tween the ages of sixteen and thirty corresponding to institutions 
for the white offenders of the same ages. Until such institutions are 

“Experimental Sociology, p. 214. 


THE NEGRO AS A CONVICT 147 





provided, the youthful Negro offender will have to live and work 
beside the worst type of adult criminal. 

In recent years one notices some efforts by the Southern states 
to remedy the abuses in their penal system. Legislative investigating 
committees in Texas, the Board of Public Welfare in South Carolina, 
the Board of Charities and Public Welfare of North Carolina, and simi- 
lar investigating organizations in other states have helped to improve 
conditions by exposing the evils and recommending improvements. 
Among the public-spirited individuals who have labored to make the 
conditions better are Frank Bane of Virginia, Dr. G. C. Williams and 
H. C. Bearly, of South Carolina, Joseph P. Byers of Kentucky, and 
Burr Blackburn, of Georgia. 

But a great part of the penal systems in the South is bad beyond 
remedy and needs to be junked. In penal institutions generally the in- 
mates are either mental defectives or victims of bad environment, and 
they no more deserve harsh treatment than a typhoid fever patient. To 
humiliate these wretches by striped garments and shaven heads, to 
house them, as we do wild animals, in iron cages or in cells behind iron 
bars, to march them in chains or in lock-step to and from their labor 
and mess hall, to stand over them with whips and guns, and, in case of 
their resentment of this treatment, to lock them in dark cells on a diet 
of bread and water—this is a spectacle which one may still behold in 
this twentieth century of our so-called civilization. 

If we are going into the business of punishing people for their sins, 
in Heaven’s name let us find the real culprit. Concerning this business, 
Carlyle once exclaimed: “Alas, the supreme scoundrel, alike with the 
supreme hero, is very far from being known. Nor have we the small- 
est apparatus for dealing with either of them, if he were known. Our 
supreme scoundrel sits, I conjecture, well-cushioned, in high places, at 
this time; rolls softly through the world, and lives a prosperous gentle- 
man; instead of sinking him in peat-bogs, we mount the brazen image 
of him on high columns: such is the world’s temporary judgment about 
its supreme scoundrels.” ° 

What most prisoners, black or white, need, in the South or else- 
where, is education with incentive and opportunity to do useful work. 
I have visited many penal institutions in the United States and in Eu- 
ropean countries, but I have seen only one that I did not want to scrap, 
and this was at Red Hill, England. Here there is no walled enclosure, 
no prison-house with iron bars, no armed guards or dark cells. I 

* Essay, “Model Prisons,” 


148 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


looked in vain for any indication that it was a prison. The beautiful 
park-like grounds and the numerous picturesque buildings gave to the 
institution the appearance of an American university. The boys moved 
about freely, dressed in white suits. I saw one group playing football, 
another cricket, while a third were disporting themselves in a swim- 
ming-pool. The boys are divided into groups of about forty, and live 
in separate cottages after the manner of the fraternity boys in our 
_ universities. 

Each boy attends classes in the forenoon, and in the afternoon works 
at some trade. He is paid for his work, deposits his savings in a bank, 
and comes out of the institution.educated and ready to follow the trade 
he has learned. The records of the school show that ninety percent of 
the boys “make good.” 

May we not hope that a vision of something of this kind will guide 
the new generation of leaders in the Southern states and that, at no dis- 
tant day, model institutions will rise up to take the place of chain-gangs 
and iron cages? 


CHA Piigkn2r 
PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 


Negro Common Schools in the South—Percentage of Negro Children Enrolled— 
Progress in Diminishing Illiteracy—Increase in Length of the School Term— 
Higher Qualifications and Salaries for Teachers—Comparative Cost of Negro 
and White Schools—Development of High Schools, State Normals, and 
Local Training Schools—Movement for Model Schoolhouses 


OLLOWING the proclamation of emancipation the center of inter- 
est in the education of the Negro was at once transferred from the 

North to the South. There was a general sentiment in the North in 
favor of giving to the liberated Negroes the rudiments of an education, 
and throughout the South provision was made for Negro schools through 
the agency of the Freedmen’s Bureau. This Bureau, during the period 
of its activities, established a total of 4,239 schools which employed 
9,307 teachers and had enrolled 247,333 students. These schools 
opened a new and large field of employment for educated Negroes. 
In 1867 the Bureau reported 1,056 Negro teachers and in 1870 it re- 
ported 1,324. 

When the Freedmen’s Bureau went out of existence in 1870, many 
of its schools which had been financed by Northern religious organiza- 
tions continued to exist under the control of these organizations. In 
the meantime, schools for Negroes had been set up by some of the 
reconstructed states. 

The Southern people were not at all friendly to the school systems 
established by the Reconstruction legislatures. In several of the states 
the carpet-baggers attempted to force the white and colored children 
to attend the same schools. Where separate schools for the races were 
not provided the white children were practically excluded from the 
benefits of public education. The teachers and supervisors of the 
schools were largely carpet-baggers. Many of the white people re- 
garded the public schools and also the Freedmen’s Bureau schools as 
only a disguised scheme of the carpet-baggers to enslave the white people, 
and place them under the domination of their former slaves. When, how- 
ever, the carpet-bag régime was overthrown, the Southern people 

149 


150 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


heartily supported the public schools which in several of the States 
had been long established before the Civil War, but provision was 
made for separate schools for the Negroes in each state. 

The Southern people took up the burden of maintaining public 
schools at a time when they were sorely stricken as a consequence of 
the Civil War, and the plunder of Reconstruction. The amount of il- 
literacy among both the whites and blacks was appalling, and such 
schools as the states were able to support for either race were very 
inadequate as to length of the school term, efficiency of the teachers, 
and character of the schoolhouses. 

As economic conditions in the South improved and more taxes could 
be levied, the public schools always came in for a larger share of the 
increased income. The public-school idea has steadily won its way, and 
to-day there is no people in the world more devoted to the democratic 
ideal of an educated citizenship than the people of the Southern states. 

Beside the maintenance of elementary schools, the South has had 
to establish a system of high schools and normal schools, and to re- 
construct her state universities. 

According to the census of 1920 there were, in the Southern states, 
including Oklahoma and the District of Columbia, 3,471,277 Negro 
children of school age, i. e., from five to twenty years old, and of these 
50.7 percent were enrolled in school. In the individual states the per- 
centage of Negro children enrolled varies from fifty-nine percent in 
Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina to forty-two percent in 
Louisiana. The percentage of Negro enrolment has been gradually 
catching up with that of the whites, the difference at present being, for 
instance, in South Carolina 59.1 percent for Negro children and 60.7 
percent for white children. 

In the matter of literacy also the Negroes have been catching up 
with the white people. From 1880 to 1920 the white people of the 
United States reduced their illiteracy from seventeen percent to six 
percent, while the Negroes reduced theirs from seventy percent to 
22.9 percent. The percent of Negro illiteracy in the South varies 
from 12.1 in Missouri, 12.4 in Oklahoma, and 15,3 in West Virginia 
to 31.3 in Alabama and 38.5 in Louisiana. 

In length of the school term the Negro schools in the South have 
been gradually gaining on the white schools. In the District of Co- 
lumbia and in Virginia the school term is the same for both Negro 
and white schools, in Oklahoma the difference in favor of the whites 
is only twelve days, and in North Carolina, only thirteen days. The 


PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 151 





greatest disparity is in Louisiana, where the white schools run sixty- 
two days longer than the Negro schools.* 

As for the expenditures per child of school age in the Southern 
states, the contrast is in favor of the whites in all of the states. In 
the District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri there is scarcely any 
difference in the per capita cost, the figures being $74 and $62.75 re- 
spectively for the white and Negro children in the District of Colum- 
bia; $10.29 and $9.46 respectively for the white and Negro children 
in Kentucky; and $22.24 and $19.46 respectively for the white and 
Negro children in Missouri. The contrast in per capita cost per child 
of each race is most striking in Georgia, where the figures are $16.31 
for the white child and $2.83 for the Negro child; in Louisiana, where 
the figures are respectively $25.37 and $3.49, and in South Carolina, 
where the figures are respectively $19.33 and $2.06. 

For the smaller expenditure for the education of the Negro child 
as compared to the white, there are several outstanding causes, some 
of which are justifiable, or at least unavoidable under existing condi- 
tions, while others are entirely indefensible. 

For illustration, in all of those Southern states which embrace a 
part of the Appalachian Mountains, there are counties in which the 
Negro population is so small and scattered that it is impossible to lo- 
cate a school where it would be accessible to any considerable num- 
ber of Negro children. Therefore, the Negro schools in these counties 
are few and of the cheapest character. For similar reasons, but to a 
less extent, many white children cannot attend a public school. “Even 
to-day” (1919), says the state agent for rural schools in Louisiana, 
“in six parishes of Southern Louisiana, fewer than 50 percent of the 
white educables between the ages of six and eighteen are enrolled in 
our schools. In two of these parishes there are twice as many white 
children out of school as in school.” * Throughout the region of the 
Dismal Swamp, from Maryland to Florida, and in all of the Appala- 
chian region, there are many children so remote from a school that 
they practically have no educational opportunities. For these scattered 
populations, both white and black, the Southern states should inau- 
gurate a system of individual house-to-house instruction such as South 
Carolina has had in operation for several years among her scattered 
mountain people. 

In many Southern cities the Negro population is congested in one, 


*U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 90, p. 126. 
*L. M. Favrot’s address before the N. A. A. C.,, p. 5. 


152 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


or several, circumscribed districts, where a few schools can be located 
which are accessible to the Negro population.* In the same cities the 
white population is scattered over a wide area, including many suburban 
residential districts, and it is necessary to have many schools in order 
to accommodate the scattered white population. In Charlotte, North 
Carolina, for example, because of the contrasting distribution of the 
Negro and white population, the Negroes, with relatively fewer schools, 
can reach them more easily than the white people can their more nu- 
merous schools. 

In Negro communities of the South land is cheap as compared to 
land in white communities, and the general character of the Negro resi- 
dences is greatly inferior to the character of the residences of the 
whites. Therefore, the land for a Negro school costs much less than 
the land for a white school, and a Negro schoolhouse can be erected at 
much less cost than a school for the whites and, at the same time, be 
an ornament to the neighborhood and stand out in as great a contrast 
to the residences of the neighborhood as the more expensive white 
school would stand out in contrast to the residences of a white neigh- 
borhood. 

In Northern and Western cities one may often observe a striking 
contrast in character between the Negro and the white schools. For 
instance, O. J. Milliken, superintendent of the Chicago and Cook Coun- 
ty School for Boys, in referring to a Negro residential district, says: 

“The schools are only boxes for them to go to school in. You don’t 
find any of the $900,000 school buildings in the colored population 
district.” * 

In New York City the value of a Negro school in Harlem in 1924 
was $157,269.95 as compared to School No. 62 in a white district which 
was valued at $1,262,359.13. 

In any of our large cities the difference between the cost of a 
schoolhouse in a fashionable district and one in the poorer districts 
corresponds somewhat to the difference in the cost of white and Negro 
schools in Norfolk, Atlanta, Charlotte, or Memphis. For example, in 
Greater New York the site for School No. 12, Manhattan, New York, 
cost $272,264.56 and the building $508,428.33; whereas the site for 
School No. 33, Borough of Richmond, cost only $2,500 and the build- 

* Jones, “Negro Education,’ U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 38, 


p. 8. 
*Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 334. 


PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 153 


ing only $22,475.60. The Washington Irving High School of New 
York City cost $1,824,434.41, whereas the one at Throgg’s Neck cost 
only $29,398.26.° 

In all cities North and South the cost of primary and high schools 
varies greatly according to location, the date of erection, and the whims 
of the school-boards. 

The only object in presenting these illustrative figures is to make 
clear the fact that a mere difference in the outlay for Negro and white 
schools in the South is not conclusive evidence that the Negro is de- 
nied a square deal. 

However, in conceding that some difference, and even a consider- 
able difference, in the outlay for Negro and white schools is justifiable, 
we do not admit that an extreme difference can be defended on ra- 
tional grounds. Where, as in several Southern States, the outlay for 
the white child is nearly ten times as great as that for the colored child, 
the only rational inference is that the Negro is not getting a square 
deal. 

Owing partly to topography, a considerable number of Southern 
white people have had very little in the way of educational opportuni- 
ties, and among them there is a notion that education spoils the Negro. 
In a lecture I heard Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina deliver 
in Madison, Wisconsin, he made it very plain that the only “nigger” 
he liked or had faith in was one of the kind on his plantation who 
could neither read nor write. 

And, among this same class of white people, the idea widely pre- 
vails that, since the Negro pays very little of the taxes he is not entitled 
to any large share of public revenue for his education. These white 
people, mostly small farmers, have little realization of the fact that 
the wage class of people of any country pay indirectly for whatever 
benefits they receive from the state, through their labor in producing 
the taxable wealth. 

Furthermore, among all classes of Southern people there has been 
a good deal of indifference to Negro education for the reason, first, 
that most of the white classes have been poor, and have concentrated 
their energies upon their own welfare; and for the reason, second, that 
the South has until recently lacked leaders of large enough vision to 
direct public attention to the development of the natural resources and 
social institutions of the individual states. For a long time after the 

*From the records of the New York City Board of Education. 


154 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Civil War, the public men in the South expended all of their eloquence 
upon national issues, and neither knew nor thought much about social 
conditions or problems at home. 

The newer leaders of the South have been especially distinguished 
for their zeal for education, and the task devolves upon them of estab- 
lishing such educational ideals and policies as will insure to the Negro 
justice in the apportionment of education funds. 

But in spite of shortcomings of the South in providing adequate 
opportunities for the education of the Negro, a mere glance at what 
has recently been done in that direction indicates that some substantial 
progress is being made and that there is a growing sentiment in favor 
of better treatment of the Negro in educational matters. 

The adjustment of the South to her new educational problem is 
only one of the many adjustments incident to her passing from the 
mores of slavery to the mores of freedom; and any sociologist knows 
that it is impossible to change the mores of a people suddenly, or to 
any great extent by artificial means, that the change can come only 
slowly and in conformity to changed conditions. In reference to this 
matter, the great social science professor of Yale University, William 
Graham Sumner, wrote as follows in his classic work on Folkways: 

“In the United States the abolition of slavery was accomplished by 
the North, which had no slaves and enforced emancipation by war on 
the South, which had them. The mores of the South were those of 
slavery in full and satisfactory operation, including social, religious, 
and philosophical notions adapted to slavery. The abolition of slavery 
in the northern states had been brought about by changes in conditions 
and interests. Emancipation in the South was produced by outside 
force against the mores of the whites there. The consequence has been 
forty years of economic, social, and political discord. In this case free 
institutions and mores in which free individual initiative is a leading 
element allow efforts towards social readjustment out of which a so- 
lution of the difficulties will come. New mores will be developed which 
will cover the situation with customs, habits, mutual concessions, and 
cooperation of interests, and these will produce a social philosophy 
consistent with the facts. The process is long, painful, and discourag- 
ing, but it contains its own guarantees.’ ® 

The impression seems to prevail among some people outside of the 
South that the meager expenditure for Negro education is due to the 
unwillingness of the Southern whites to tax themselves for educational 

chest fotas 


PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 155 


purposes. But, while the white people of the South cry out loudly 
against taxation in general, they are not notably behind other people 
in taxing themselves for education. Numerous investigations have 
shown that, in proportion to the value of property, the levy for school 
purposes in the South compares well with that in the North. For in- 
stance, North Carolina spends for her public schools forty cents for 
each hundred dollars of taxable property as compared to thirty-eight 
for Massachusetts.’ Merriam, a Northern author, is frank enough to 
admit that “three or four months of schooling burdens Mississippi 
more than ten months burdens Massachusetts.” ® 

Lyman Abbott said in the Outlook, “While Northern benevolence 
has spent tens of thousands of dollars to educate Negroes, Southern 
patriotism has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for the same 
purpose. This has been done voluntarily and without aid from the 
Federal Government.” ® 

Now and then some Southern legislator complains at the burden 
of Negro education, and introduces a bill to limit the expenditure for 
Negro schools to the sum which the Negroes pay in taxes. It is un- 
doubtedly a fact that much more money is paid out for Negro educa- 
tion than comes in from Negro taxes (the auditor of the state of 
Virginia estimated that the Negroes paid in revenues to the state $105,- 
565.00 and that the State paid for the education of the Negro $324,- 
864.00) ,/° but the same is true of the poorer class of white people in 
every part of the United States. It is the theory of democracy that 
educational facilities shall be provided for all classes according to their 
needs, and not according to their contributions to the state. The 
Southern people hold to this theory, and never take seriously the oc- 
casional bill to apportion educational funds upon the basis of Negro 
taxes. 

People outside of the South, unacquainted with the economic and 
geographical conditions and the complications in the distribution of 
the population, have no idea of the difficulties of building up a public- 
school system. They do not realize the fact that it was not until 1904 
that the Southern people were able to rebuild their per capita wealth 
to the pre-war figure.11. The funds for education have been far be- 


"Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 279. 

* The Negro and the Nation, p. 397. 

* Vol. 83, p. 634. 

*® Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 305. 
“Jones, op. cit., p. 30. 


156 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


hind the needs, and it has been a hard problem to make the funds go 
around. It has been impossible, for instance, to provide schoolhouses 
in all of the school districts, so that in hundreds of cases the school is 
held in a church, or in a house. donated or rented. It is more fre- 
quently the case that the Negro schoolhouse is not publicly owned, but 
the number of white schools conducted in private houses is amazing. In 
South Carolina, of the 2,354 Negro, schools, only 1,442 are publicly 
owned. In Alabama and Georgia only three-fourths of the schools for 
whites are owned by the public.” 

In many towns and cities, and also in many rural districts, the com- 
mon schools for the Negroes are the same in character as those for 
the whites, though often less expensive. Norfolk, Louisville, Nash- 
ville, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Little Rock are conspicu- 
ous for their up-to-date Negro schools.1* In Atlanta, a recently built 
school for Negroes cost $500,000 and one in Norfolk cost $600,000. 
In North Carolina, during Governor Morrison’s administration, more 
money was spent for the education of the Negroes than was spent for 
the education of the whites during Governor Aycock’s administration, 
1900-1904, which was notable for educational advancement. 

A novel method introduced in North Carolina for stimulating in- 
terest among the colored people in education is the holding of Negro 
county-school commencements. Of this innovation N. C. Newbold, 
state agent for rural schools, says: “Commencement Day is practi- 
cally a county holiday. The county superintendent, teachers, school 
committee, and other educational leaders invite and urge the people 
throughout the county to gather on the day appointed at the county 
courthouse or some other suitable place for the exercises. They bring 
lunch, and come prepared to spend the day. 

“The exercises on such occasions are varied. Early in the day, or 
on the day before, the industrial supervisor (if there be one in the 
county) and other teachers put up industrial exhibits, for the inspec- 
tion of patrons and other visitors, in the hall where the meeting is to 
be held, or in some other convenient place. These exhibits consist of 
sewing, all the way from plain gingham aprons to handsome pieces of 
embroidery and drawn-work; cooking—cakes, meats, breads, candy; 
baskets, shuck mats, many samples of wood-work, etc., etc. Many of 
the best white people visit these exhibits, and expressions of surprise, 
admiration, and wonder are heard on all sides: The Negroes them- 


4 Jones, op. cit., p. 33. 
*% Tbid., p. 33. 


PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 157 


selves are elated, happy, both because of the accomplishments of the 
children, and because their white friends are pleased with the work 
exhibited. 

“In some counties, before the exercises in the courthouse, there is 
a grand parade of the Negroes through the streets of the county town. 
This is made up of school children, teachers, and patrons in buggies, 
wagons, floats, carts, and on foot. There is usually a chief marshal, 
in silk hat and sash befitting his position, and several assistant marshals, 
all of whom are mounted. Hundreds of people take part in these pa- 
rades, which create great interest. They are conducted in an orderly, 
systematic manner. In no case have I seen or heard of disorder or 
unbecoming conduct on the part of the crowd. Many white people line 
‘the sidewalks and street corners to see the parade. In most cases the 
comments by white people are expressions of surprise, satisfaction, and 
commendation. Many times have I heard the expression, ‘They are 
just as orderly as that many white people would be,’ and sometimes a 
bystander would add, ‘Yes, and more so.’ 

“The parade usually ends at the courthouse or hall where the indoor 
exercises are to be held. This is where the state agent for rural schools 
comes in for his share of the honors. The exercises are usually for- 
mally begun by some minister, who conducts devotional exercises. 
There are old-time melodies and other songs, and sometimes exercises 
by the children. After these the county superintendent, city mayor, 
or some other official presents the speakers of the occasion. Sometimes 
the chairman of the county board of education presides. At such 
times he gives a very practical talk on education from the viewpoint 
of the business man. The county superintendent has his word of sym- 
pathy and encouragement. The state agent brings his simple message 
of progress and hope from the standpoint of the larger unit—the state. 
Sometimes other white people are present and give interesting, helpful 
talks. Nearly always the chairman asks the supervising industrial 
teacher and other leading Negroes to speak. Perhaps the one word 
‘happiness’ may be used to describe the tone and spirit of these talks ; 
they do the white people present as much good as they do the Negroes 
themselves. The spirit of these meetings is fime—no other word de- 
scribes it so well... . 

“When the day’s exercises are over the people return to their homes, 
encouraged and inspired to attempt greater things for their children, 
their homes, and their communities.” 4 

4 “Negro County-School Commencements,” Southern Workman, Dec., 1916. 


158 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 








In recent years very good high schools for Negroes have been built 
in St. Louis, Forth Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Louisville, 
Norfolk, Atlanta, and Charlotte.® In North Carolina, colored high 
schools increased from thirteen in 1921 to thirty-four in 1924, and 
high-school students, from 1,347 to 5,341. By way of preparing for 
more high schools there are 200 elementary schools which give instruc- 
tion in secondary subjects.1° In 1924 Texas boasted of 150 schools of- 
fering high-school work to Negro boys and girls, one-fourth of this 
number being rated by the state as high schools of the first class. In 
many localities in the South the missionary and endowed schools for 
Negroes occupy the place of the public high school, and most of the 
numerous Negro colleges and universities also cover the ground of the 
high school. 

The Southern states are not only building more and better Negro 
schools on their own initiative, but they are cooperating with outside 
agencies in supplying public funds and private donations for Negro 
schoolhouses. For example, the Southern people are heartily aiding 
the Rosenwald endowment, the object of which is to promote the con- 
struction of model colored school buildings in cooperation with the 
local communities and county authorities. The basis of the coOperation 
is as follows: 

“For a one-teacher schoolhouse the community and county author- 
ities must raise in cash, material, and labor, $750. The Rosenwald 
fund will contribute $400. 

“For a two-teacher house the community and county authorities 
will raise, as above, $1,000. The Rosenwald fund will give $500. 

“In cases of consolidation of two or more schools the Rosenwald 
fund will contribute more.” 

The table on following page shows the number of Negro schools 
built up to September, 1910, and the sources of the funds. 

In the Southern states the character of the common schools in 
each county and township depends largely upon local initiative. 
Where the people have an enthusiasm for education they appear be- 
fore the county commissioners or board of education, demand new 
schools, better schools, and better teachers, and they get what they 
want; whereas the people who are indifferent to education take what 
is offered them without complaint and allow their schools to become 
dilapidated. 


* Jones, op. cit., p. 37. 
* Ibid., Dp. 37. 


PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 159 


Amounts contributed by 





Number 7 OEGA LS MAL NAAM ELEOV TE POAT EIA, TS aN ae 2 oS 
of school- _— States White Colored Mr. Rosen- Total 
States houses people people wald 
Alabama ....... 179 ©=—- $43,776 = $8,445 $91,764.93 $55,450 $190,435.93 
PMANSAS . . . a5 3s 22 10,525 1,435 8,654 9,500 30,114 
Mreoriad tl)... os": 23 2,075 10,202 17,532 7,500 38,200 
Kentucky ...... 5 6,045 250 4,041.50 2,600 12,936.50 
Monisiana .:.... 49 9,300 3,000 33,390 17,600 63,290 
Maryland ...... 4 2,700 500 1,125 1,450 5,775 
Mississippi ..... 28 3,613.50 13,644.05 19,253:25 . 12,276 48,787.70 
North Carolina... 85 31,651 3,020:5035 770707 oe 4 305 95,730.25 
South Carolina... 9 3,300 8,376 5,006 3,900 21,272 
Tennessee ...... 59 72,905 3,870 26,150 30,175 142,100 
OCT 38 26,555 750 21,784.80 10,800 68,889.80 
Ota Ut tiie 501 213,345.50 54,309.45 265,179.23 193,616 720,540.18 


Negro teachers are generally paid lower salaries than white teach- 
ers for two reasons. First, Negro teachers are not so well trained and 
are less efficient than white teachers. Second, Negro teachers have a 
lower standard of living than white teachers. In other words the pay 
of Negro teachers is governed to a large extent by the same economic 
laws which determine wages in any other line of work. In hundreds 
of white schools in the South the salaries of the teachers are very low 
for the same reason that the salaries of Negro teachers are low. In 
the mountains of Kentucky, a white school-teacher receives a salary 
of only $40 per month, but is able to live comfortably on it; whereas 
a white teacher in Louisville has to be paid $150 a month to cover the 
higher cost of living in that locality. In Oklahoma the contrast be- 
tween the salaries of white teachers in the common schools is greater 
than the contrast between the salaries of Negro and white teachers in 
the common schools of Richmond, Charlotte, Atlanta, Montgomery, 
New Orleans, Memphis, or St. Louis. Among teachers of lower grade 
the Negroes receive less than one-half as much as the whites, but in 
all of the states the difference between the salaries of the two races di- 
minishes among the teachers of higher grade. In Norfolk, Virginia, 
the salaries of Negro principals of schools have in recent years in- 
creased faster than the salaries of white principals, and the same is true 
as to increase in the salaries of high-school teachers. 

Expenditures for white schools have increased faster than for 
Negro schools, for the reason chiefly that the needs for white schools 
have grown faster. It is necessary to remember that in educational 
progress the white people were a long way ahead of the Negro at the 
close of the Civil War, and hence it has been necessary to provide a 


160 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


great many more secondary schools for the whites than for the Ne- 
groes. There are ten times as many white children prepared to enter 
high school as Negro children.‘ Not only are few Negro children 
prepared to enter a high school, but to a greater extent than white 
children, they have to drop out of school to earn a living. In the en- 
tire South there are only 24,034 Negro children pursuing secondary 
studies.?§ 

The greater cost of building and maintaining high schools as com- 
pared to common schools is one of the reasons for the greater expendi- 
ture for the education of white children.’® In this connection it is to 
be remembered also that the demands for secondary education for 
Negro children are met in a large measure by schools maintained by 
Northern philanthropy. 

The white schools in the South have suffered, and still suffer, from 
ill-trained teachers, but slowly, through the development of more and 
better training-schools, this drawback is being overcome. The Negro 
schools have suffered more in this respect than the white schools, be- 
cause of the smaller proportion of Negroes fitted to teach, and the diffi- 
culty of providing Negro training-schools. The number of qualified 
Negroes ready to attend normal schools has been so small that only a 
half-dozen Southern states have deemed it expedient to establish a 
Negro normal school. Because very few Negroes are able to attend a 
school which takes them away from home, it has been found necessary 
to train Negro teachers in county schools. 

Up to 1918 there were seventy-seven county schools for the train- 
ing of Negro teachers, distributed as follows: Alabama, eleven; Ar- 
kansas, five; Florida, one; Georgia, five; Kentucky, two; Maryland, 
one; Louisiana, four; Mississippi, three; North Carolina, fourteen; 
South Carolina, six; Tennessee, six; Texas, five; Virginia, eight. The 
number of such schools is rapidly increasing. They are supported main- 
ly from public-school funds, but receive aid for current expenses from 
the state fund, the General Education Board, and from private indi- 
viduals, white and black. In addition to the county training-schools, 
there are city normals for Negroes in Louisville, Baltimore, and Wash- 
ington, and teacher-training courses in the Negro high schools of 
Richmond, St. Louis, and Little Rock. In Virginia public aid is given 
to private schools giving summer courses in teaching. 


Jones, op. cit., p. 42. 
% Ibid. p. 42. 
* Tbid., p. 29. 


PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION 161 


A movement making for general improvement in the Negro schools 
is the appointment of Negro county supervisors. There are already 
about 163 counties in the South which have such supervisors. Their 
salaries are paid partly from the county funds and partly from the 
Jeanes Fund.?° Ten of the Southern states have state supervisors of 
Negro schools, but so far only white men have received the appoint- 
ments. 

In the administration of the public-school system in the South it is 
difficult to do justice to both races under so widely varying conditions, 
and it is always much easier to find fault with the system than to point 
out a remedy. 

When judging the treatment of the Negroes by the white South, it 
would be well to consider the treatment of the Negro by the whites in 
Australia and in South Africa. Maurice S. Evans, a highly intelligent 
and broad-minded citizen of South Africa, recently visited the South 
to acquaint himself with our Negro problem through personal observa- 
tions. He noticed “that on each million of Negro population in the 
South (1910-11) a million dollars was annually spent for education. 
In Natal the million natives receive $75,000 worth. In the Transvaal 
the position is not so good. Here, in this Northern province of the 
Union of South Africa, it is computed that the native population con- 
tribute $1,500,000 to the State Exchequer, and yet barely $15,000 is 
spent upon their education. It is well sometimes to make such com- 
parisons when one is told that the position in the South in this regard 
is without parallel, for discrimination and injustice in the civilized 
world.” 24. He adds that primary education is “within the reach of 
the great majority of Negro children in the South. I would also say 
that a special industrial course, or a University education, may be ob- 
tained by any intelligent Negro boy or girl, however poor, if endowed 
with grit and character.” ??....and: “that though the appropriations 
towards Negro education are small as compared with those received by 
the whites, the opportunities for primary education for the Negro child 
are greater than in many other civilized countries, and the number of 
institutions for higher learning are surprising to one who had imag- 
ined that the opportunity to the Negro ended with a poor elementary 
education.” 7° 


» Jones, op. cit., p. 36. 

™ Black and White in the Southern States, p. 127. 
ULL ss fie Len 

* Evans, op. cit., p. 155. 


CHAPTER 22 
INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 


Institutions of Higher Learning and for Technical Instruction Supported by the 
States and the Federal Government—Institutions of Higher Learning Sup- 
ported by White Religious Organizations—Endowments of White Philan- 
thropists to Aid Negro Education—Donations of the Negroes Themselves for 
the Education of Their Race 


N the South there are about a dozen Negro normal schools supported 

by the states, and state aid is also given to private institutions 
offering courses for the training of teachers. There are also sixteen 
state agricultural and mechanical colleges for Negroes, supported partly 
by the states and partly by the federal government. 

Under the Smith-Lever Act, passed by Congress in 1913 for agri- 
cultural extension work in the several states, the Negroes are receiv- 
ing their share of the funds appropriated. The terms of the act re- 
quire each state to raise a fund equal to the sum contributed by the 
federal government. The work for the Negroes, under the operations 
of this act, has consisted of establishing movable schools giving in- 
struction in agriculture and home economics. 

Under the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act of 1917, the 
Negroes, as well as the white people of the South, are receiving a very 
practical kind of education which the ordinary elementary school is 
not able to furnish. The vocations included in the scope of the act are 
agriculture, home economics, trade, and a variety of industries. 

This act, like the Smith-Lever Act, requires each state to raise a 
fund equal to that received from the federal government. The share 
of the funds which go to the Negro schools is determined by the per- 
centage of Negroes in the total rural population. 

Looked at from the standpoint of numbers, the Negroes of the 
South are better provided with institutions of higher learning than the 
whites. In each of the Southern states there are from a half-dozen 
to a dozen Negro colleges and universities. 


The first impulse toward higher education for the Negroes of the 
162 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 163 


South came from the American Missionary Association, which was 
strongly anti-slavery, and which planned to establish one school of 
higher learning in each of the larger Southern states, normal and 
graded schools in the principal cities, and common and parochial schools 
in rural centers. 

Under this plan arose Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1861, and 
later Atlanta University, Georgia; Berea College, Kentucky; Fisk 
University, Tennessee; Straight University, Louisiana; Talladega Col- 
lege, Alabama ; Tougaloo University, Mississippi; and Tillotson College, 
Texas. 

In 1862 the American Baptist Home Mission Society began to take 
interest in the refugees within the lines of the Union army. At first 
its efforts were purely religious, but they later expanded into an exten- 
sive educational program resulting in the establishing of eight institu- 
tions, as follows: For men, Atlanta Baptist College and Virginia 
Union University; for women, Spelman Seminary, Atlanta, and Harts- 
horn Memorial College, Richmond; and as coeducational institutions, 
Bishop College, Texas; Benedict College, South Carolina; Shaw Uni- 
versity, North Carolina; and Jackson College, Mississippi. In addi- 
tion to maintaining these schools, the society has given aid to several 
schools owned by Negroes. 

In 1866 the Northern Methodists organized their Freedmen’s Aid 
Southern Education Society, and their efforts have resulted in the es- 
tablishment of ten institutions of college grade, and numerous others 
for more elementary study. They have established Clark University 
in South Atlanta, Georgia, which includes Gammon Theological Sem- 
inary, the best equipped and endowed of all theological schools for 
Negroes; Claflin University, South Carolina; New Orleans University, 
Louisiana; Rust University, Mississippi; Walden University, Ten- 
nessee; Wiley University, Texas; Bennett College, North Carolina ; 
George R. Smith College, Missouri; Morgan College, Maryland; and 
Philander Smith College, Arkansas. 

In 1882 the Presbyterians incorporated a Board of Missions for 
- Freedmen and began educational work in behalf of the Southern Ne- 
groes. The chief institutions established by this board are Biddle Uni- 
versity, North Carolina, for men, and for women, five seminaries: 
Ingleside, Virginia; Scotia, North Carolina; Barber Memorial, Ala- 
bama; Mary Holmes, Mississippi; and Mary Allen, Texas. Independ- 
ent of the work of this board, the United Presbyterians have estab- 
lished Knoxville College, Tennessee. 


164 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

The Episcopalians have established St. Paul Normal and Industrial 
School, Virginia; St. Augustine’s School, North Carolina; and several 
minor schools in other states. 

The Catholics have established St. Joseph’s Industrial School for 
Colored Boys, Delaware; St. Augustine’s Academy, Kentucky; and St. 
Frances’ Academy, Maryland. Besides these the Catholics maintain 
numerous primary schools for Negro children, 

Other religious organizations maintaining Negro schools include the 
Christian Woman’s Board of Missions, the Congregational American 
Missionary Association, the Friends Societies, the Lutheran Board of 
Colored Missions, etc. 

In nearly all of these iste Glen the president and faculty were 
originally white, but gradually Negroes have come to fill most of the 
chairs. At the present time, about seventy-five percent of the teaching 
staff of these institutions is colored and all of the Sadaittes are 
colored, except one or two.* 

The following are some of the white philanthropists who have made 
notable contributions to Negro education: 


THE DUKE ENDOWMENTS 


The late James B. Duke of Durham, N. C., in his indenture of 
$40,000,000, besides providing a handsome endowment for Duke 
University, stipulated that 4 percent of the remainder of the fund, which 
cannct be definitely stated but which will be several million dollars, be 
given to the Johnson C. Smith University for Negroes, Charlotte, N. C. 

His brother, Benjamin N. Duke, has given $300,000 to Kittrell Col- 
lege, $25,000 to Livingstone College, $50,000 to the Laurinburg Normal 
and Industrial School, $50,000 to the Durham College—all in North 
Carolina—and also $25,000 to Utica Normal School of Mississippi. 


THE SLATER ENDOWMENT 


John F. Slater of Connecticut has made a gift of $1,000,000 for the 
benefit of Negro education. The present endowment is $1,750,000, 
the income of which is used chiefly to encourage industrial education 
and the training of teachers for Negro schools. Instead of establishing 
new institutions, the directors of the fund give aid to sixty-eight ex- 


* Jones, “Negro Education,” U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 38. 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 165 





isting schools, selected with reference to carrying out specific objects. 
Dr. James H. Dillard is the director of the fund. 


THE PHELPS-STOKES FUND 


In 1911 an incorporation under the above title was authorized by 
the New York state legislature to carry out the provisions of the will of 
Caroline Phelps Stokes, who bequeathed her fortune for the improve- 
ment of housing conditions of Negroes in New York, and for the edu- 
cation of Negroes both in Africa and the United States, and for other 
purposes. The income of the fund has amounted to about $900,000 
annually, and the expenditures in behalf of Negro education have been 
as follows: 

The publication, in cooperation with the United States Bureau of 
Education, of a thorough survey of the present status of Negro edu- 
cation; the establishment of fellowships at the University of Virginia 
to encourage the study of the Negro; the donation of $10,000 to the 
Peabody College for Teachers at Nashville to promote helpful relations 
between that college and the educational institutions for Negroes; and 
the donation of funds to assist the work of the Southern University 
Race Commission. 


THE GENERAL EDUCATION BOARD 


This organization has control of a fund of about $34,000,000 do- 
nated by John D. Rockefeller for the promotion of higher education in 
the United States. The members of the Board in 1917 were: Fred- 
erick T. Gates, Walter H. Page, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Albert Shaw, 
Wallace Buttrick, Starr J. Murphy, Edwin A. Alderman, Hollis B. 
Frissell, Harry Pratt Judson, Charles W. Eliot, Andrew Carnegie, Ed- 
gar L. Marston, Wickliffe Rose, Jennie D. Green, Anson Phelps Stokes, 
Abraham Flexner, and George E. Vincent. 

The board does not supply endowments for Negro schools, but 
contributes toward their maintenance. Its chief aim is to aid colleges 
and universities in increasing their efficiency and in adapting their cur- 
ricula to the needs of their communities. It has promoted the employ- 
ment of state supervisors of Negro schools, and better cooperation 
between public and private institutions. It has encouraged the farm- 
demonstration movement among the colored people, and the organiza- 
tion of rural clubs for colored boys and girls. 


166 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


THE JEANES FUND 


In 1907 Anna T. Jeanes, a Quaker lady of Philadelphia, donated 
$1,000,000 for aid to rural schools for Negroes. The donation was the 
outcome of presentations of needs of rural schools made to her by 
Dr. Frissell and Dr. Booker T. Washington. The board of trustees 
consists of five Northern white men, five Southern white men and 
five Negroes. William H. Taft and Andrew Carnegie were among the 
members of the board. The income of the Jeanes Fund has been used 
chiefly in employing traveling teachers to give instruction in home in- 
dustries and sanitation, and to organize clubs for the promotion of 
better schools and neighborhoods. The traveling teachers are ap- 
pointed by, and work under the supervision of, the county superin- 
tendents of education, and the Jeanes Fund board has succeeded in hay- 
ing the county authorities bear a part of the teachers’ salaries. 


THE ROSENWALD RURAL SCHOOL DONATION 


In 1914 Julius Rosenwald of Chicago announced through Tuskegee 
Institute that he would donate money to aid in building rural school- 
houses for Negroes in the South on the following terms: He would 
give not exceeding $300 for any school building for Negroes, provided 
an equal sum were raised from public funds or private subscriptions. 
Up to June, 1916, Rosenwald had aided in the erection of 142 new 
schoolhouses at a cost to him of $44,718. His expenditure has been 
supplemented by public funds to the amount of $21,525; by private 
contributions from white people, $8,820; and by contributions from 
Negroes, $61,951.? 


THE DANIEL HAND EDUCATIONAL FUND 


This consists of $1,500,000 donated in 1888 by Daniel Hand of 
Connecticut for the education of needy Negroes in the Southern states. 


THE STEWART MISSIONARY FOUNDATION 


This grew out of a gift in 1894 of $110,000 by Reverend W. F. 
Stewart to promote missionary work among the Africans. The income 
is used to provide missionary instruction at the Gammon Theological 
Seminary. 

*Jones, op. cit., p. 167. 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 167 


Many donations of smaller amounts have been made. 

The following are some of the Negroes who have contributed funds 
for the education of their race: Bishop Payne, who donated several 
thousand dollars to Wilberforce University ; Mary E. Shaw, who donated 
out of her estate $38,000 to Tuskegee; John McKee of Philadelphia, 
who left about $1,000,000 for the education of his race; Thomy Lafon 
of New Orleans, who left $413,000 to religious and educational insti- 
tutions of that city without distinction of color; George Washington 
of Jerseyville, Illinois, a former slave, who left $15,000 for Negro ed- 
ucation; Nancy Addison of Baltimore, who left $15,000, and Louis 
Bode of the same city, who left $30,000 to the Community of Oblate 
Sisters of Providence; Anna Fisher, a colored woman of Brooklyn, 
New York, who left $26,500 to sundry educational institutions. 

The noticeable fact in regard to tax-supported higher institutions 
of learning for Negroes is the absence of anything corresponding to a 
state university for the whites. The reasons for this are that too few 
Negroes are far enough advanced to justify them; that Howard Uni- 
versity, in Washington, D. C., supported by the federal government, 
offers collegiate and professional training for Negroes; and that the 
numerous colleges and universities supported by religious and philan- 
thropic organizations supply in a large measure the present demands 
for higher education. In 1920 there were only 2,641 Negro students 
pursuing collegiate courses in all of the private and higher institutions 
in the South, including public high schools.? 

In each state there are opportunities for industrial training in the 
agricultural and mechanical colleges and in the private industrial 
schools, opportunities for teacher-training in the state or private normal 
schools, and opportunities for theological training in the denomina- 
tional colleges. When it comes to training for the professions of law, 
medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry, there are opportunities for the 
Negro in only a few of the states, but the great national university 
for Negroes in Washington offers training for these professions. 

The great number of private Negro colleges and universities, to- 
gether with the Negro state normal schools, the agricultural and mechan- 
ical colleges, and the federal aids and educational foundations, would 
seem to overwhelm the Negro with opportunities for higher education, 
but the fact is that very few institutions in the South offer the Negro 
anything above the high-school grades. The chief difficulty in offer- 
ing advanced courses in these institutions is the lack of students pre- 


* Jones, op. cit., p. 117. 


168 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


pared to take them. As a larger number of Negroes comes to be qual- 
ified for a four-year college course, both the private and the state- 
supported schools will have to expand to meet the demand. Even now, 
the Negroes who are ready and able to receive a college education are 
at the disadvantage of having to go to Howard University or other in- 
stitutions a long way from home. To remove this disadvantage, it 
would seem to be incumbent upon each Southern state to do one of two 
things: either to raise to college rank some one of her Negro schools, 
or to offer to qualified Negroes a number of scholarships tenable in a 
college outside of the state. Such scholarships have been offered for 
many years in the British Barbados and in British Guiana. 

In the state of Oklahoma, for example, there is no private Negro 
college and the state “Colored Agricultural and Normal University” 
is doing no college work. The result is that Negroes aspiring to edu- 
cation above that of the high school have to go out of the state to 
get it. 

Another thing which each Southern state ought to do is to give 
better support to her agricultural and mechanical college for Negroes. 
According to the figures of 1920, the total appropriations by the South- 
ern states for their sixteen institutions of this kind amounted to only 
$263,074, which is less than a year’s state allowance for the white 
agricultural and mechanical college in Oklahoma. 


CHAPTER 23 
INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING (CONT.) 


Institutions of Higher Learning Supported by the Negroes Themselves—-Endowed 
and Variously Supported Professional and Industrial Schools—The Work of 
Hampton and Tuskegee—Public Libraries for Negroes 


HE first step by the Negroes themselves in the direction of higher 

education for their race was taken by the African Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, which during the Civil War had come into sole possession 
of Wilberforce University in Ohio. At the close of the war the Negroes 
educated at the university were sent into the South to organize churches 
and schools. The work of the African Methodist Episcopal Church has 
expanded from year to year until to-day it maintains one or more 
schools or colleges in each Southern state. The chief institutions of 
this organization are Morris Brown College, Georgia; Western Uni- 
versity, Kansas; Allen University, South Carolina; Paul Quinn College, 
Texas; and Kittrell College, North Carolina. These institutions are 
supported by collections from the members of the numerous African 
Methodist churches. 

The African Methodist Zion Church next undertook an educative 
work in the South similar to that of the African Methodist Episcopal 
Church. It established four colleges, one theological school, and seven 
academies. The leading institution of this organization is Livingstone 
College, North Carolina. 

The Colored Methodist Church, a minor section of Methodists, 
joined in the educational crusade, and established Lane College, Ten- 
nessee; Miles Memorial College, Alabama; and Mississippi Industrial 
College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, beside contributing to the support 
of others. 

In more recent years, the Negro Baptists have undertaken an im- 
mense educational scheme in the South. Mention has been made else- 
where of the institutions of learning established by the American Bap- 
tist Home Mission Society, which was mostly under the control of 


white Baptists in the North. After a time, the Negro Baptists began 
169 


170 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


to inaugurate an educational work independent of that of their white 
brethren, and have succeeded so far as to outdo them in the number 
of schools established. At present they have in operation over a hun- 
dred schools of varying types and standards. Most of them, of course, 
are miserably poor in every essential. Their schools of higher learn- 
ing are Selma University, Alabama; Arkansas Baptist College, Little 
Rock; Florida Baptist College, Jacksonville; Florida Institute, Live 
Oak; Americus Institute, Walker Baptist Institute, Jeruel Academy, 
and Central City College, Georgia; State University and Eckstein 
University, Kentucky; Morris College and Seneca Institute, South 
Carolina; Central Texas College, Texas; Howe Institute and Roger 
Williams University, Tennessee; and Virginia Seminary, Lynchburg. 
The Negro Baptists alone raise for the support of their institutions about 
$200,000 annually, but this sum, with donations from outside, is al- 
together inadequate for the efficient maintenance of such a multiplicity 
of schools. 

While much of the educational work undertaken by the Negroes has 
been ill-directed, no one can fail to admire the ambitious spirit and 
heroic sacrifices which they have made in behalf of educating their 
people. 

Many Southern Negroes are educated in Northern universities. 
There are about 6,000 Negro graduates in the United States and more 
than two-thirds of them live and work in the South. 

Among the institutions which prepare for professional careers, 
Howard University in Washington, D. C., is foremost. It is an insti- 
tution of high rank and has excellent schools of law, medicine, phar- 
macy, and dentistry. It is supported by the federal government. 

Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, is an institution 
of respectable rank and turns out well-educated physicians, pharma- 
cists, and dentists; and Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, 
also of respectable rank, gives degrees in medicine. The University of 
West Tennessee in Memphis gives degrees in medicine, pharmacy, and 
dentistry. In Kentucky the Negroes who aspire to enter the legal pro- 
fession may be educated at the Central Law School of Louisville. 

As for training for the ministry, there are innumerable colleges and 
universities in the South which profess to have departments of the- 
ology. Among these, however, only two or three are of respectable 
rank. The others are not prepared to offer courses of college rank for 
the reason that nine-tenths of their pupils are pursuing elementary and 
secondary courses, and the teachers are qualified only for such instruc- 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING ya 


tion. They are greatly handicapped by holding to the old classical 
curriculum with no electives and no instruction in the social sciences. 

The wiser friends of the Negro in both the North and the South 
have, from the inception of Negro education, had the good sense to 
perceive that a backward race needs, above all, an education having to 
do with the kind of work which is available for earning a living. The 
need of industrial education among the Negroes is shown in the fact 
that less than two percent of the Negroes gainfully employed are en- 
gaged in any kind of skilled or professional work. 

Among the earliest friends of the newly emancipated Negro none 
stands out more prominently than General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, 
who founded Hampton Institute for the practical education of Negroes 
and Indians. He was of Scotch-Irish stock and chanced to be born 
in the Hawaiian Islands while his parents were doing missionary work 
there. He graduated at Williams College, and there came under the 
inspiring influence of Mark Hopkins. In 1862 he enlisted in the Union 
army, and rose to the rank of brigadier-general. At one time he 
was in command of Negro troops. After the war he entered the 
service of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and was assigned to the James- 
town peninsula in Virginia, where he had to do with thousands of 
freedmen. 

General Armstrong believed that the salvation of all men, white 
or black, was to be found in hard work, and his knowledge of the Ha- 
waiian and the Negro enabled him to perceive that they were childish, 
and that what they needed more than anything else was not political 
power, but education to develop thrift and moral stamina. 

In 1868 he put his idea into practice by starting an industrial school 
for Negroes at Hampton, Virginia. He received a small appropriation 
from Congress and donations from friends, which enabled him to put 
up a building and employ one teacher and a matron. 

Maurice S. Evans, in his book Black and WlIute in the Southern 
States, writes of Hampton and its founder as follows: “This far- 
seeing and devoted man, the greatest benefactor to the Negro and 
American Indian peoples, was born in Hawaii of American parents, 
and commanded a corps of Negro soldiers in the Civil War. A man 
of unusual insight, he was convinced that for the true uplift of these 
peoples an education should be given that would form character, and 
at the same time be calculated to help them and fit them for their work 
in life, and make them worthy men and citizens. And so Hampton 

* Jones, “Negro Education,” U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 38. 


172 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


was founded, and from small beginnings it has gradually grown to the 
great undertaking I found. It is now presided over by Dr. Hollis B. 
Frissell, who is carrying on the work in the spirit of the founder. What 
that is may be expressed in his own words: ‘To train selected youth 
who shall go out and teach and lead their people, first by example by 
getting land and homes, to give them not a dollar that they can earn 
for themselves, to teach respect for labour, to replace stupid drudgery 
with skilled hands, and to these ends to build up an industrial system, 
for the sake not only of self-support and intelligent labour, but also for 
the sake of character.’ 

“T found on my visit a large park-like area of 185 acres of beauti- 
fully kept lawns shaded by forest trees, and in this park numerous iso- 
lated substantial buildings, 113 in number, suited to the numerous and 
varied requirements of such an institution. The students are both male 
and female and are all resident. They number over 1,600. The faculty, 
instructors and officers are for the greater part white, and number 
about 200, and the policy pursued is laid down by a Board of seven- 
teen Trustees, including prominent men from both North and South. 

“Every year a larger number of students apply for admission than 
can be accepted, but they are not necessarily denied because of poverty; 
they may, by working during the day, learn and work at a trade and 
thus earn their board, and academic instruction, which in that case is 
given in the evening. 

“There are thirteen Trade Courses, including all the principal handi- 
crafts, which are practically taught in thoroughly equipped workshops. 
All male students must also take a course in agriculture, as well as 
manual training. In the same spirit girls must learn housekeeping in 
all its branches, gardening and hygiene. This training is of course 
linked to an academic course. In addition, at a distance of some six 
miles, is a farm of 587 acres with 175 head of cattle, 31 horses and 
mules, 300 hogs, and 1000 fowls, with 400 acres under cultivation, and 
with 22 houses and farm buildings. At both places the greater part of 
the buildings have been erected by the students, and all repairs are done 
by them. 

“All this and much more may be gleaned from the admirable cata- 
logue issued annually, but it does not exhaust by any means the activities 
which centre in Hampton. Annual conferences are held to discuss sub- 
jects of interest to the Negro people, when such matters are on the 
agenda, as ‘The Negro labourer in his relation to Trades Unions,’ “The 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 173 


progress of Education in rural communities,’ and the like. Twice a 
year a Farmers’ Conference is convened on the lines I have previously 
indicated. A mass of literature is issued by the publication department, 
including an excellent monthly, ‘The Southern Workman,’ and a large 
number of educative leaflets which are distributed free of charge, or 
at nominal rates. I select a few of the subjects dealt with in these 
pamphlets: “Sheep, their care and management,’ ‘Dairy Cattle,’ “Drain- 
age,’ ‘Mosquitoes,’ ‘Milk and butter,’ “Seed planting,’ ‘Rotation of 
Crops,’ “Farm manures,’ “Patent medicines,’ ‘Proper use of certain 
words,’ 

“Very wisely, as I think, the male students are organized into a 
cadet corps, and wear neat uniforms made at the place. The Negro is 
peculiarly susceptible to mass movement and discipline, and this estab- 
lishes an esprit de corps and mutual feeling and action that could not 
otherwise be provided for.” ? 

The other great industrial school for Negroes is Tuskegee Institute 
in Alabama, founded by Booker T. Washington, who as a poor and 
friendless boy had worked his way through Hampton. Filled with the 
enthusiasm and spirit of his alma mater, he resolved to build another 
institution of the same kind in another part of the South. 

Tuskegee comprises 2,345 acres and 113 buildings. Its total equip- 
ment is valued at over $2,000,000. The number of students is about 
2,500. 

“As at Hampton,” says Evans, “these students are compelled to 
learn a trade, they cannot attend for purely academic instruction and, 
as there, the poor student gets a chance of working out his fees. At 
first entrance all must do their share of manual work, whether they 
pay for their course or work it out, they must undertake janitor’s work, 
scrubbing floors, cleaning windows and the like. 

“The work and influence of Tuskegee extend beyond the school 
grounds, large as these are, and every year sees an increase of this 
outside extension work. An annual Negro Farmers’ Conference is 
held on the lines I have previously described. This was established 
twenty-three years ago, and was then only attended by the local farmers 
of Macon County; now they gather from all over the South. A Farm- 
ers’ Institute was formed in 1897, and the members meet monthly at 
Tuskegee in the large Agricultural Building. A short course is given 
which consists of two weeks’ concentrated observation and study. When 

Evans, Black and White in the Southern States, p. 131. 


174 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


it was started eleven attended. In 1911 the number registered was 
1,900. This work has proved of the greatest value as a stimulus and 
encouragement. These are only a few of the extension activities which 
radiate from Tuskegee... .° 

“The authorities here claim that the average earnings of the 9,000 
students who have passed through the Institute are $700 per annum. 
Their average earnings before they entered were $100 a year. They 
also say of adult students, of whom there are a considerable number, 
that before entering their earning capacity was $5 to $10 a month. After 
remaining at the Institute from one to three years such are in demand 
at wages running from $1.50 to $3 a day, with prospect of increased 
pay as experience is gained. The exceptional ones are able to command 
almost at once from $4 to $5 a day.” * 

There are about twenty other industrial schools of minor importance 
scattered over the South, all more or less copies of Hampton and Tuske- 
gee, and a majority of them founded by graduates of the above-named 
institutions. 

In the Southern states there are about twenty-five publicly sup- 
ported libraries for the Negroes and about the same number supported 
by private donations. The Carnegie Corporation has donated funds 
for library buildings for Negroes in Atlanta, Georgia; Greensboro, 
North Carolina; Houston, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; Meridian, 
Mississippi; Mound Bayou, Mississippi; Nashville, Tennessee; New 
Orleans, Louisiana, and Savannah, Georgia. 

There are public libraries for Negroes without outside aid at Char- 
lotte, North Carolina; Galveston, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; and 
Louisville, Kentucky. 

The Carnegie Corporation has donated funds varying from $6,000 
to $20,000 for libraries for Negro schools. Mrs. C. P. Huntington has 
given $100,000 for a library at Hampton. 

By way of comparing the facilities for higher education among the 
Negroes in America and South Africa, Evans says: “there is not a 
single State institution either for higher literary, vocational, or other 
training in the Union of South Africa. Only one voluntary institu- 
tion in the whole Union—that of Lonedale, supported by the Presby- 
terians of Scotland—is in any way comparable with the many in the 
South. When this state of things is compared with the Universities, 
Normal Colleges, Medical and Dental Colleges and industrial institu- 

* Op. Cit., p. 136. 
* Op. cit., p. 137. 


INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING 175 


tions provided by the States and by philanthropic bodies for the higher 
intellectual and vocational training of the Negro, it makes a South 
African wonder at the complaints of the Southern Negro at his lack 
of educational facilities.” ° 


MOY.) Ctt,, Dp. 201, 


CHAPTER 24 
THE SITUATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION 


General Estimate of Institutions of Higher Learning for Negroes—Too many of 
Such Institutions—Few of Them Doing Work of College Grade—Many of 
Them Badly Located—Need of Elimination and Codperation in the Interest 
of Efficiency 


CONSPICUOUS fault in the educational system of the Negroes, 
as formerly in that of the whites, is that it is top-heavy; 1. e., it 
has too many so-called colleges and universities absorbing the funds 
and energies which might be better applied to strengthening and build- 
ing up institutions of a more elementary character. The oversupply 
of Negro colleges has resulted in such competition that, in order to get 
pupils at all, it has been necessary to admit those who are not even far 
enough advanced to enter courses of the high-school grade. It thus 
turns out that many of the Negro colleges make no pretense of doing 
college work. Only thirty-three percent of the Negro “colleges” in the 
United States offer any courses of college grade.’ 

Even the colleges which offer some college courses have to devote 
most of their energies to preparing their pupils to enter them. Only 
ten percent of the pupils enrolled in the Negro colleges are pursuing 
courses above the secondary grade. This elementary instruction is partly 
necessary because of the absence of high schools and private schools 
which prepare students for college. Not many years ago the colleges 
and universities for the whites found it necessary to do much prepar- 
atory work for the same reason. 

One might suppose that these numerous Negro colleges are at least 
doing a valuable work in supplementing the shortage in high schools, 
but their geographical situation does not fit them to answer the de- 
mands of a high school for the reason that they require the pupils to 
live away from home. 

The institutions of higher learning maintained by Northern white 
organizations are generally doing serviceable work, but in many cases 
they are badly located, and maintain an old-fashioned curriculum which 
is ill-adapted to the Negro’s needs. 

* Jones, “Negro Education,” U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 38. 

176 


THE SITUATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION 177 





The institutions supported by Negro organizations are generally do- 
ing elementary work, and in most cases have neither the equipment nor 
the teaching staff necessary to give any kind of instruction efficiently. 
Of the 153 Negro-owned schools, only sixty are of importance and 
“a few are brazen frauds imposing upon the philanthropy of Northern 
donors.” ? Out of a total attendance of 17,299, only I15 are pursuing 
courses of college grade.* In all of the private schools for Negroes 
there are 83,679 pupils, of whom only 1,588 are pursuing college 
courses.* Only three of the private schools have a student body, fac- 
ulty, equipment, and income sufficient to warrant the title of college.° 

There is very great need of coOperation between the privately 
owned schools for Negroes in the interest of concentration of resources 
and energy upon the schools favorably situated and capable of main- 
taining proper standards. Also there should be codperation in the 
interest of modernizing the courses of study, and adapting them better 
to the needs of the race. The theological schools especially need de- 
partments of social science, and many of the other schools might serve 
a useful purpose in introducing training courses for teachers. 

It is gratifying to note that a beginning in the direction of codpera- 
tion of the private schools has already been made. In 1913 Dr. James 
H. Dillard effected a conference of representatives of the various agen- 
cies concerned in the private schools for Negroes with the view of pre- 
venting duplication of work and readjusting the curricula to the needs 
of the community. A good suggestion of a plan for redistribution of 
schools for the higher education of the Negro is given on a map on 
page sixty-three in Bulletin 38, published by the United States Bureau 
of Education in 1916. 

* Jones, op. Cit., p. 151. 
* Tbid., p. 151. 

*Tbid., p. 8. 

picid) p. 11. 


CHAPTER 2 
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO 


Church Affiliations—Emotional Outbursts at Revival Meetings—Character of 
Negro Preachers—Their Former Tendency to Become Leaders in Politics— 
Social Aspects of the Negro Church—Great Value of Religion for the 
Colored People 


INCE the Civil War the Negro members of the various white re- 

ligious denominations have to a great extent withdrawn and formed 
independent churches. Among the independent Negro churches the 
Baptists and Methodists take the lead, the former with a membership 
of over 3,000,000, and the latter, about 1,000,000. There are, however, 
about 600,000 Negroes who belong to white denominations. The Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church has 320,025 Negro members; the Northern 
Baptists, 53,842; the Roman Catholics, 51,688; the Primitive Baptists, 
35,700; the Presbyterian Churches, 33,445; and the Protestant Epis- 
copal, 23,775." Most of the Negro members of white churches reside 
in the Northern states, except the members of the Roman Catholic 
Church, who are mostly residents of Louisiana. 

The Negroes of the South at the close of the Civil War were very 
ignorant and retained a great many superstitions which had been brought 
over from Africa. They believed firmly in ghosts, haunts, witches, 
charms, magic, and signs of good and bad luck, and they used a variety 
of outlandish roots and herbs and hocus-pocus to cure disease. Very 
naturally, the first Negro converts to Christianity carried over into their 
new religion a large amount of African superstitions, the elimination 
of which has been a slow and difficult process. The ignorant white 
people of the South have not been free from superstition, and they have 
not greatly helped the Negro to outgrow his. 

A characteristic of the Negro’s religion, very outstanding for many 
years following the Civil War, was its high degree of emotionalism 
and tendency to express itself in frenzied shouts, gesticulations, and 
ecstatic visions. 


*Negro Year Book, 1921-22. 
178 


RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO 179 


Myrta Avery, describing the Negro gatherings at the close of the 
Civil War, says: 

“Tt was as if a force long repressed burst forth. Moans, shouts and 
trance meetings could be heard for miles. It was weird. I have sat 
many a night in the window of our house on the big plantation and lis- 
tened to the shouting, jumping, stamping, dancing, in a cabin over a 
mile distant. In the gray dawn, the negroes would come creeping back, 
exhausted, and unfit for duty.” ? 

Professor Davenport, in his description of an “experince meetin’ ” 
among the Negroes of Tennessee, says: “At the outset the interest was 
not intense, and I noted several colored people on the fringe of the 
crowd sound asleep. Testimony flagged a little, and the leader called 
for that expression of tense emotional excitement known among the 
negroes as ‘mournin’.’ One speaker was floundering in a weltering 
chaos of images and seemed likely to sink without anybody to rescue 
him, when the leader rose and with animation on every feature shouted 
to the audience, ‘Mourn him up, chillun! And the audience began—all 
except those who were asleep—at first soft, but rising higher and higher 
until they fell into a rhythm that carried everything before it, including 
the disciple who had floundered for words in which to shape his re- 
ligious experience. But he had no trouble longer. Images flashed 
through his mind with great rapidity and found quick expression on 
his lips. He spoke in rhythm and the audience rhythmically responded. 
He was speedily in full movement, head, arms, eyes, feet, face, and 
soon he was lost in ecstacy. And the contagion swept everything before 
it. Even the sound sleepers on the fringe of the crowd were caught 
and carried into the movement as if by a tide of the sea. At the very 
climax of the meeting, a woman rose to her feet, moved forward to the 
open space in front of the pulpit, evidently under the compulsion of the 
lyric wave. Having reached the front, in one wild burst of pent-up 
emotion, she fell rigid to the floor and lay motionless during the rest 
of the service. Like the devotees of the ghost dance she was believed 
to be enjoying visions of the unseen world.” ® 

Dr. DuBois gives his impressions of a camp-meeting as follows: 

“A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air, and seemed to seize 
us—a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, and that lent terrible 
reality to song and words, The black and massive form of the preacher 


2 Dixie After the War, p. 204. 
*Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction, p. 43. 


180 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us 
in singular eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the 
gaunt-cheeked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into 
the air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round about came wail and 
groan and outcry and a scene of human passion such as | had never 
before conceived.” # 

The shouting and other violent outbreaks characteristic of Negro 
revivals have been gradually diminishing, and are now rarely found 
except in the small towns and backwoods, but the Negro’s religion is 
still very largely an affair of the emotions. George S. Merriam, I 
think, truthfully says of the Negro’s religion: 

“Perhaps its most eloquent expression to our imagination is those 
wonderful oldtime melodies, the negro ‘spirituals’ as they have been 
made familiar by the singers of the negro colleges. Their words are 
mystic, scriptural, grotesque; the melodies have a pathos, a charm and 
moving power born out of the heart’s depths through centuries of sor- 
row dimly lighted by glimmerings of a divine love and hope. The 
typical African temperament, the tragedy of bondage, the tenderness 
and triumph of religion, find voice in those psalms. 

“Religion is not to be despised because it is not altogether or even 
largely ethical. The heart depressed by drudgery, hardship, forlorn- 
ness, craves not merely moral guidance but exhilaration and ecstacy. 
Small wonder if it seeks it in whiskey; better surely if it finds it in 
hymns and prayers and transports partly of the flesh yet touched by the 
spirit.” 

The religion of the Negro has been following closely after that of 
the whites, and the extravagant characteristics of both have been due to 
the same causes. De Tocqueville thought that the religious eccen- 
tricities and fanaticisms of the Americans were due to the preoccupation 
of the people with material pursuits, which naturally inclined them to a 
violent reaction towards the things of the spirit. The people of 
America, he said, are subject to momentary outbreaks “when their 
souls seem to burst the bonds of matter by which they are restrained, 
and to soar impetuously towards heaven. ... From time to time 
strange sects arise, which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths 
to eternal happiness.” * Hugo Munsterberg attributed the religious ex- 
cesses of the Americans to the “colorless and dull’ life of the masses. 

* Souls of Black Folk, p. 190. 


*The Negro and the Nation, p. 350. 
* Democracy in America, Vol. 2, p. 142. 


RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO 181 





“Where religion has been the single intellectual stimulus, it has been 
an intoxicant for the pining soul: and persons drank until they ob- 
tained a sort of hysterical relief from deadly reality.” 7 

If the barrenness of life among the white people has predisposed 
them to hysterical outbursts, how natural should it be for the Negroes, 
with their greater confinement to routine and greater mental darkness, to 
plunge tumultuously towards the illuminations from above. 

Negro preachers have been, with rare exceptions, men of little edu- 
cation and a great gift of sonorous verbosity and loud ranting, often 
also men of a low type morally. They have been pompous, and much 
given to sensuous indulgence. In the Negro churches in the small towns 
one can still hear the preacher yelling at the top of his voice, and mem- 
bers of the congregation who have not been lulled to sleep, responding 
by frequent exclamations such as “Amen,” “Talk to ‘em preacher,” 
“Great God,” “You're right, brother,’ “Now you are preaching,” “Dat’s 
so,” and the like. An Englishman, speaking of a sermon he heard in a 
Southern town, says: 

“The text was, “Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, for they shall be filled.’ I have heard many worse ser- 
mons than this competent, fluent, popular discourse, which consisted 
mainly of an exposition of the overpowering strength of the metaphor 
of ‘hunger and thirst.’ ‘We may credit our backs,’ said the preacher, 
‘but we must pay our stomachs; we can put the back off, but we can’t 
put off the stomach.’ (‘Yes, oh yes!’ shouts, moans, and wails.) ‘No 
doubt most of you, before you came here have had a good drink of 
coffee or tea, but how many of you have had a real good drink from 
the fountain of everlasting life?’ (Confused sounds not unlike the 
yelpings of a large kennel.) ‘If some of you didn’t eat and drink more 
physically than you do spiritually, you’d be skeletons. That’s plain 
talk.’ (Shrieks, wails, and yodelling.)” ® 

Some of the Negro preachers have a lot of practical sense, as illus- 
trated in the case of Reverend T. H. Ewing of Kansas City, Missouri. 
When he took charge of a Baptist church in that city in 1892 only 
three of his flock owned property. ‘During four years he lectured to 
his people on the ten cents a day saving plan. He advised them to 
walk to their work and save the nickel; to live, eat, and dress according 
to their means; to stay out of the saloons and away from the theatres, 
and to think of and provide for the future. He advised them to buy 


"The Americans, p. 517. 
*Archer, Through Afro-America, p. 165. 


182 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





their groceries in bulk and to pay cash instead of the five and ten cent 
credit plan, so popular to-day, and he showed them in plain figures 
how much he saved during the year and what could be done with the 
money.” He urged them to “keep a bank account, and buy a home 
just as soon as possible.” In 1914 his church membership was 600, 
and 100 of the members owned their homes.?® 

The Reconstruction régime in the South had the effect of drawing 
many Negro preachers into politics. In Mississippi G. W. Gayles, 
who had begun his career as a Baptist minister in 1867, became a promi- 
nent figure in the Reconstruction muddle of his state. He was ap- 
pointed by Governor Ames a member of the board of police for 
a district in Bolivar county, and later appointed by Governor Alcorn 
as justice of the peace. He was twice elected a member of the 
lower house of the legislature and once a member of the state 
senate.*° 

Allen Allensworth of Kentucky combined religion and politics, and, 
at intervals between his pastorate of several Baptist churches, went 
on the stump for his party, and held a number of offices. He was a 
presidential elector on the Republican ticket in the campaign of 1880, 
and a delegate to the National Republican Convention of 1884.” 

Christopher H. Payne of West Virginia, after serving as a Sunday- 
school missionary and pastor of several Baptist churches, took up the 
profession of law and politics. In 1896 he was elected a member of 
the West Virginia legislature, and later was appointed a deputy col- 
lector of internal revenue, and lastly consul to the Virgin Islands, 
where he served for fourteen years and where he now resides and 
practices law.?? 

W. B. Derrick of Virginia started out as a Methodist minister, and, 
after a prominent part in state politics, returned to the ministry and 
was elected a bishop of his church." 

H. M. Turner began his career as an itinerant preacher in St. 
Louis, and in 1867 came to Georgia to organize union leagues and to 
corral the Negro voters. He was elected a member of the constitutional 
convention, and later a member of the legislature. President Grant 
appointed him postmaster of Macon in 1869, but he resigned this office 


* Martin, Our Negro Population, p. 41. 

* Woodson, History of the Negro Church, p. 226. 
“ [bid., p. 230. 

“ Tbid., p. 231. 

* Tbid., p. 232. 


RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO _ 183 


on account of opposition. Afterward he was appointed to the office of 
United States inspector of customs.‘ 

Among the Negro preachers who have distinguished themselves in 
some other field than that of politics, the first that comes to my mind 
is Charles C. Price of North Carolina. He was a man of rare intel- 
lectuality, to which he had added a liberal education, giving him a broad 
and sympathetic grasp of the problems of life. Perceiving that his 
race was in special need of practical education, he became a pioneer in 
advocating, and putting in practice, industrial education. In 1882 he 
was appointed to the presidency of Livingstone College at Salisbury, 
North Carolina, and he erected the buildings for the college with the 
labor of the students. 

His chief reputation, however, was won on the lecture platform. 
He was a superb lecturer, very earnest and forceful in the presentation 
of his subject, and gifted with a fine flow of wit and humor which 
was always used to drive home the point of his argument. He lectured 
before such learned societies as the Nineteenth Century Club of 
New York, and he once went abroad and lectured to various audiences in 
England. Whenever he lectured in the South, as many white people 
as colored came to hear him, the whites sitting on one side of the audi- 
torium and the colored on the other. I have heard him several times. 
In his physiognomy and bearing he was a distinguished-looking man, 
but his skin was as black as that of any Negro I ever saw. 

C. T. Walker of Augusta, Georgia, has been prominent solely as an 
evangelistic Baptist minister. For many years he was pastor of the 
Tabernacle Baptist Church of Augusta, and, by the force of his per- 
sonality and eloquent discourses, attracted a great many white people 
to hear him. For a period of five years he served as pastor of the 
Mt. Olivet Baptist Church of New York City, and while there organized 
a branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association. He made a trip 
to Europe and the Holy Land, and was the author of several books.® 

In the larger cities there are now to be found many Negro preachers 
of education and of moral stamina, but the general run of them are of 
a mediocre type. I recently attended, in company with an ex-slave of 
my uncle, a religious service in a Negro Episcopal church in Washing- 
ton, and the sermon, music, and quiet sereneness of the worshippers 
compared well with the average service among congregations of white 
people. 

1 bid., p. 232. 

* Woodson, op. ct., p. 246. 


184 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


It is a conspicuous fact that Negro preachers have rarely become 
distinguished except in politics. 

In some of the Negro churches the method of taking up collections 
is that each member of the congregation marches up the center aisle 
and deposits his cash on a table. This method enables each one to 
show off his Sunday clothes, and it is said that “a single individual will 
often go up six or seven times during the collection, giving a nickel 
each time.” 1® Professor B. H. Meyer of the University of Wisconsin 
says of his visit to a Negro church in Washington, D. C.: 

“White people leave the front seats vacant in a church. Negro 
people in Washington do the opposite. They gather on the foremost 
seats, the most gaudily dressed ladies and gentlemen in the lead. They 
pay no attention to the sermon, but chat during the entire service.” 

The ceremony of baptism, which often takes place on the banks of 
a river, always attracts a large concourse and is sometimes accom- 
panied by a wild religious frenzy. “As soon as the candidate has been 
immersed he or she begins to struggle, beating the water right and 
left, and four men are kept busy holding the newly inspired applicant.” 17 

The Negro churches in the South are the centers of social life to an 
extent not true of the white churches anywhere. The Negroes are at- 
tracted to the church largely because of their love of being in a crowd. 
In connection with each Negro church there are many subordinate 
societies and clubs which hold frequent meetings and are largely at- 
tended. 

Partly because the social life of the Negroes is so intimately bound 
up with the church, it turns out that all of the social rivalries, jealousies, 
and feuds are carried over into the church, resulting in the develop- 
ment of coteries and factions which often split the church in two. In 
fact, internal bickerings and irruptions are characteristic of the Negro 
churches. For illustration, of ninety churches in Thomas County, 
Georgia, about one-half originated in a split; and of the fifty-four 
churches in Atlanta, eleven were the outgrowth of splits. In conse- 
quence of these splits the membership of many Negro churches is very 
small. Seventeen of the churches in Atlanta, for instance, have less 
than 100 members. The great number of small churches is one reason 
for the poor average of Negro preachers. 

The white people of the South, as of the North, are liberal in 
donating money to help build Negro churches, but otherwise they have 


* Odum, Social and Mental Traits of the Negro, p. 79. 
" Thid., p. 86. 


RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO 185 


very little to do with the religious activities of the colored people. It 
seems to me that a valuable service might be rendered to the religious 
life of the colored people if the colored and white clergymen more fre- 
quently exchanged pulpits and more frequently met in ministerial con- 
ferences. 

The National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association 
maintains two secretaries who devote their time to work among colored 
girls. One of the secretaries travels among school organizations and 
seeks to build up higher ideals of womanhood and the home. 

The International Sunday School Association has a Department of 
Work among Negroes, and employs a field worker who visits the colored 
schools and organizes teacher-training classes, and introduces better 
methods of Bible study. 

In spite of all of the shortcomings of the Negro’s religion, any one 
who 1s able to penetrate beneath the surface of things must be impressed 
with the fact that, upon the whole, religion has been a great blessing 
and uplifting force among the colored people of the South. Maurice 
Evans, an English writer on the life of the Southern Negro, was able 
to discern this aspect of the Negro’s religion: 

“Unable to find their satisfactions in the usual secular channels, 
finding little but hardship and restriction in their everyday life, and 
yet bursting with emotionalism, they grasped at the compensations of a 
life to come, when all toil and sorrow should be done away with, and 
everlasting joy, of a kind they could understand, would be the portion 
of all believers. No wonder the songs that dwelt on the golden streets, 
the harp and crown, and eternal rest, appealed to them, and that their 
prayers are full of yearning for this glorious hereafter. 

“Not only for the religious emotions, but for his social satisfactions 
has the church been the solace of the Negro. I attended many services, 
and found in Sunday school and church, as well as in many other 
activities which clustered round them, an obvious satisfaction at the mere 
pleasure of being together ; chatting conversations, a purring satisfaction 
in moving among their fellows, a personal importance in occupying 
recognized official positions, were obviously very pleasant to them. I 
found that debating societies, tea-parties, guilds, class-meetings, be- 
nevolent societies and similar activities filled up the week, while almost 
the whole of Sunday was taken up with services, the necessary 
intervals being largely occupied with sociability,—in meeting, walking 
and talking.” 78 

*% Black and White in the Southern States, p. 116. 


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THE NEGRO IN THE WORLD WAR 





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CHAPTER 26 
TRAINING CAMPS AND RACE TROUBLES 


First Employment of Negro Troops—Negro Selectmen in the Training Camps— 
Race Troubles in Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Elsewhere 


HEN the United States entered the World War there were about 

20,000 trained Negro soldiers ready for service. About half of 
this number were in the four colored regiments of the Regular Army, 
and the other half belonged to various companies of the National 
Guard. 

The first service of Negro troops during the World War was per- 
formed by the Ist Battalion of Infantry of the National Guard, Dis- 
trict of Columbia, which was called out to protect public property in 
and about the capital, such as the water system, the power plants, etc. 
The battalion was under command of Major James E. Walker, a 
colored officer. 

In the first draft for service in the war, the percentage of Negroes 
certified for service was higher than that of the whites; the respective 
figures being thirty-five per hundred for the Negroes and twenty-five 
for the whites.* 

The Negro selectmen were trained by white officers at special can- 
tonments located in various states. 

There were several camps for training white selectmen for officers, 
but none for the Negroes, because it was not supposed that there were 
enough educated Negroes to justify a special camp for making officers 
of Negro selectmen. However, upon assurances that a sufficient number 
of Negroes of college grade could be assembled, Secretary of War 
Newton D. Baker consented to establish an officers’ training camp for 
colored men at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and here, by October 14, 1917, 
commissions were issued for 106 captains, 329 first lieutenants, and 204 
second lieutenants. On November 1, these officers were distributed to 
the various Negro training camps. 

In August, 1917, at the suggestion of Dr. Robert R. Moton, prin- 
cipal of Tuskegee Institute, that Secretary Baker call in a colored man as 


*Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 67. 
189 


“190 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





his adviser in matters affecting the interests of Negro troops and Negro 
supporters of the war, Emmett J. Scott, former secretary to Booker T. 
Washington, was appointed as special assistant to the secretary of war. 

In and about the various Negro training camps there was much 
friction between the white officers and the colored privates, between the 
white and colored officers, and between white civilians and Negro sol- 
diers. Among both the white and the Negro soldiers there were ignorant 
and “bully” types of men who were ever ready to go out of their 
way to express their racial animosities, and to provoke resentments 
and breaches of the peace. 

A serious riot occurred at Houston, Texas, where a Negro training 
camp was located. Some Negro soldiers belonging to the United States 
Regular Army, who wished to express their contempt for the jim-crow 
street cars of Houston, entered a car reserved for whites. They were 
promptly ejected. Later an indignant band of Negro soldiers returned 
to the city, and, in a street fight with the police, several of the com- 
batants were killed. Thirteen of the Negro soldiers were tried by 
court-martial for precipitating the riot, convicted, and executed. 

A less serious, but similar, trouble occurred at a Negro camp at 
Spartanburg, South Carolina, to which had been sent several Negro 
units of the New York National Guard. One Sunday evening when a 
Negro soldier, Noble Sissle of New York “stepped into a white hotel 
to buy a New York newspaper, the proprietor walked up to him, it is 
stated, and with an oath demanded to know why he did not remove his 
hat. Sissle, holding the newspaper in one hand and his change in the 
other, did not respond quickly enough to the demand and his hat was 
knocked from his head. When he reached down to pick it up and 
arose he was all but felled by a blow, and as he retreated towards the 
door was kicked by the white proprietor. On the sidewalk, awaiting 
Sissle’s return, was Lieutenant James R. Europe, a colored officer, 
bandmaster of the 15th New York Regiment. A group of colored and 
white militiamen ‘rushed’ the hotel, but were ‘called to attention’ by 
Lieutenant Europe, who demanded that the crowd disperse. The New 
York militiamen expressed themselves as being violently opposed to 
the treatment which had been visited upon Sissle; and so the next night 
a group of these soldiers banded together and began marching to 
Spartanburg, several miles away, to ‘shoot it up’ as the soldiers at 
Houston had ‘shot up’ that town after the clash with the Houston police 
in the August preceding.” ? The white people of South Carolina pro- 

*Scott, p. 80. 


TRAINING CAMPS AND RACE TROUBLES I9I 


tested against the retention of the New York militiamen in the camp, 
and, as a way out of the trouble, the War Department ordered the men 
overseas. 

A colored lieutenant by the name of Tribbett, from Connecticut, had 
been ordered to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and, in traveling through the state 
of Oklahoma, he occupied a car reserved for white people. When the 
train stopped at a station near Chickasha, the sheriff entered the car, 
forcibly ejected Tribbett, and lodged him in the county jail. The next 
day he was fined for violating the law. The case was called to the at- 
tention of the War Department, the contention being made that an 
officer traveling under army orders was not subject to the jurisdiction 
of the state authorities. The War Department took no action in the 
matter. 

Much aao in the public prints grew out of the effort of a Negro 
sergeant to enter a theater patronized only by white people at Man- 
hattan, Kansas. The proprietor of the theater refused to admit the 
Negro, and this was the signal for a volley of protests and criticisms 
from the Negro soldiers and the Negro press. General C. C. Ballou, 
commander of the Negro troops encamped near Manhattan, had the 
proprietor of the theater prosecuted and fined, but, at the same time, 
issued an order to the Negro troops counseling them against acts 
which might tend to provoke racial conflicts. He said: 

“Tt should be well known to all colored officers and men that no 
useful purpose is served by such acts as will cause the ‘color question’ 
to be raised. It is not a question of legal rights, but a question of policy, 
and any policy that tends to bring about a conflict of races, with its 
resulting animosities, is prejudicial to the military interest of the 92nd 
Division and therefore prejudicial to an important interest of the col- 
ored people. 

“To avoid such conflicts the Division Commander has repeatedly 
urged that all colored members of his command, and especially the offi- 
cers and non-commissioned officers, should refrain from going where 
their presence will be resented. In spite of this injunction, one of the 
sergeants of the Medical Department has recently precipitated the pre- 
cise trouble that should be avoided, and then called on the Division 
Commander to take sides in a row that should never have occurred had 
the sergeant placed the general good above his personal pleasure and 
convenience. This sergeant entered a theatre, as he undoubtedly had 
a legal right to do, and precipitated trouble by making it possible to 
allege race discrimination in the seat he was given. He is strictly within 


192 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


his legal rights in this matter, and the theatre manager is legally wrong. 
Nevertheless the sergeant is guilty of the greater wrong in doing any- 
thing, no matter how legally correct, that will provoke race animosity.” ° 

This order was bitterly denounced by a section of the Negro press. 
“Many newspapers pronounced the order an insult to the Negro race. 
At various gatherings of colored people General Ballou’s resignation 
as commander of the 92nd Division was demanded, and at no time during 
his incumbency as the head of the Division was General Ballou able 
to regain the confidence of the colored masses, with whom he had been 
immensely popular prior to this episode, in recognition of his valued 
and sympathetic services as supervisor of the officers’ training camp at 
Fort Des Moines, Iowa, from which came 639 colored men, graduating 
with commissions as captains and first and second lieutenants.” * 

When the Negroes who had been commissioned as officers were sent 
to the Negro training camps, where white officers were in command, 
much friction grew out of the contact of the Negro and white officers. 
Many white officers refused, or were reluctant, to salute the colored 
officers. 

The colored people were very sensitive to their rights, and they sent 
to the War Department from all sections of the country a great variety 
of complaints of discriminations on account of color. “Colored soldiers,” 
says Scott, “complained that they were kept more closely confined to the 
camps than were white soldiers; that they had the greatest difficulty in 
obtaining passes to go to town or to visit relatives, and that they were 
punished more severely than were white soldiers for trivial offenses. 
The ‘bad blood’ between the Military Police and the colored soldiers 
frequently led to free fights, near ‘race riots,’ and the ‘rushing’ of the 
guards in an attempt to leave camp regardless of the possession of 
passes.° 

“Attempts at segregation were charged against the Quartermaster’s 
Depots at Chicago and St. Louis, where color discrimination was alleged 
in the matter of appointments, promotions, and working conditions, and 
where unfairness was said to exist in the withholding from the colored 
employees of the use of toilet facilities, as well as restrictions in the 
service of the depot restaurants, cafeterias and the like.” ® 

MECott, DOS... 

“Tbid., p. 97. 

°Tbid., p. 104. 

*Tbid., p. 96. 


CHAPTER 27 
SERVICE OF AMERICAN TROOPS AS A WHOLE 


Service of the American Troops in Stopping the German Drive in 1918, and in 
Forcing the Germans Back—The St. Mihiel Offensive and the Meuse- 


Argonne Offensive 


N order to understand the part which the American Negro troops 

played in the World War it will be necessary to fix in our minds 

the main stages in the course of that war, and the part which the Ameri- 
can troops as a whole played in the Allied victory. 

The initial stage of the war was the drive of the Germans through 
Belgium and into northern France, in 1914, terminating in the counter- 
attack of the French, and the retreat of the Germans back to the Marne. 
The opposing forces now entrenched themselves, forming an irregular 
battle line from the North Sea to Switzerland. The trenches offered 
such an impregnable defense that neither army seemed to be able to 
advance more than a few yards at a dash, and the opinion came to be 
widespread that the armies were deadlocked and that the war could 
not end by a military decision. 

In the course of a year, however, the invention of the tank, the em- 
ployment of the barrage, and other offensive expedients made it possible 
for either side to gain considerable territory, but only at a ruinous 
sacrifice of men. 

Up to the time that the United States government entered the war 
in the spring of 1917, the opposing forces in France had been see- 
sawing, like football players, back and forth, a few yards at a time, 
with no decided gains for either side, and there had been no decisive 
fighting on either the Russian or the Italian front. 

In July, 1917, a small contingent of American troops had arrived in 
France, and were able to take part in the British attack at Cambrai. 

In order to prevent the Germans from concentrating their forces 
against Russia and Italy, the Allies sought to maintain a series of offen- 
sive movements on the western front. In spite of this effort, however, 
the Germans withdrew their main divisions and launched a drive against 
the Russians which culminated on September 3 in the capture of Riga, 

193 


104 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


and the complete collapse of the Russian forces.1 The following 
month, the Germans and Austrians combined in a drive on the Italian 
front which resulted in forcing the Italians back to the Piave River 
with a loss of 300,000 men and immense quantities of guns, ammuni- 
tion, and stores. These victories of the Germans were so overwhelming 
against both Russia and Italy that those nations were practically elimi- 
nated as factors in the World War. 

By the month of November, the Germans were concentrating their 
divisions on the western front, and it was now their evident determina- 
tion to make a decisive attack on that front before the American troops 
should have time to reach the battle-line in any formidable numbers. 

The French and British commanders, knowing that the Germans 
would be able to assemble on the western front a force much stronger 
than that of the Allies, were urging the United States to expedite the 
transportation of her troops, and to place on the battle-line the units 
which had already arrived in France.” On December 31, 1917, there 
were 176,665 American troops in France, but only one division had ap- 
peared on the front. 

In compliance with the wishes of the Allied commanders, the Ameri- 
can troops then in France, on January 19, 1918, began to take over 
scattered sectors of the battle-line, some at the sector north of Toul, 
some at Soissons, some at Luneville, and others near Verdun.’ 

While the American troops were thus scattered, the Germans began, 
on March 21, their first great offensive. The concentration and manipu- 
lation of their forces was so effective that they overcame all resistance 
during the initial period of the attack. “Within eight days,” says 
Pershing, “the enemy had completely crossed the old Somme battle- 
field and had swept everything before him to a depth of some fifty-six 
kilometers. . . . The offensive made such inroads upon French and 
British reserves that defeat stared them in the face unless the new 
American troops should prove more immediately available than even 
the most optimistic had dared to hope.” 4 

On April 3 the Allies realized that if the onslaught of the Germans 
was to be resisted, it would be necessary to place all of the Allied forces 
under one command so that they could be shifted and concentrated 


* Pershing, Final Report, Commander-in-Chief American Expeditionary Forces, 
p. 17. 

2 Tbid., p. 18. 

> Tbid., p. 19. 

* Tbid., p. 25. 


SERVICE OF AMERICAN TROOPS AS A WHOLE 195 


according to the emergencies of the situation; and, in furtherance of 
this idea, General Foch was chosen as Supreme Commander. The 
crisis precipitated by the first German offensive caused General Persh- 
ing to make a hurried visit to General Foch’s headquarters and to place 
at his disposal all of the American troops then in France, numbering 
something over 300,000.° 

On April 9 the Germans pushed back the British line on a front of 
forty kilometers in the vicinity of Armentieres and along the Lys 
River.® 

“The next offensive of the enemy,’ (May 27) says Pershing, “‘was 
made between the Oise and Berry-au-Bac against the French instead of 
against the British, as was generally expected, and it came as a complete 
surprise. The initial Aisne attack, covering a front of thirty-five kilo- 
meters, met with remarkable success, as the German armies advanced 
no less than fifty kilometers in four days. On reaching the Marne, 
that river was used as a defensive flank and the German advance was 
directed towards Paris.” 

The American troops in France now numbered 600,000,’ and were 
more extensively employed along the battle-line and in large enough 
units to make their assaults conspicuous wherever they happened to be 
placed. The first unit of American troops to play a decisive part on 
the battle-line was the Second Division. When the Germans began their 
advance against the French on the Aisne, the American Second Divi- 
sion, which had been in reserve northwest of Paris, “was hastily diverted 
to the vicinity of Meaux on May 31, and early on the morning of June 
Ist, was deployed across the Chateau-Thierry-Paris road, near Mon- 
treuril-aux-Lions, in a gap in the French line, where it stopped the 
German advance on Paris. At the same time the partially trained Third 
Division was placed at French disposal to hold the crossing of the 
Marne, and its motorized machine-gun battalion succeeded in reaching 
Chateau-Thierry in time to assist in successfully defending that river 
crossing. 

“The enemy having been halted, the Second Division commenced a 
series of vigorous attacks on June 4th, which resulted in the capture of 
Belleau Woods after very severe fighting. The village of Bouresches 
was taken soon after, and on July 1, Vaux was captured.” ® 


Wibsih.s| p.n32. 
"Tbid., p. 20. 
“Tbid., p. 33. 
hid. p.. 33. 


196 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





On June 9, the Allied morale was greatly strengthened by a suc- 
cessful resistance by the French of an attack of the enemy along the 
Montdidier-Noyon front with a view to widening the Marne pocket and 
pushing his lines nearer Paris.° 

On July 15 the Germans began their last drive, which they encour- 
aged their soldiers to believe would “conclude the war with a German 
peace.” This drive was on the Champagne sector and the eastern and 
southern faces of the Marne pocket. In this battle the American troops 
again played a decisive part. Although the Germans penetrated the 
French line to a depth of eight kilometers, they were completely stopped 
on the American front adjoining the French on the left. The com- 
mander of the American Third Division occupying this front reported 
the day after the battle that “there were no Germans in the foreground 
of the Third Division sector except the dead.” ?° A single regiment of 
the Third Division “met the German attacks with counter-attacks at 
critical points and succeeded in throwing two German divisions into 
complete confusion, capturing six hundred prisoners.” ™ 

The American troops now in France numbered 1,200,000, and up to 
this time had been put in as emergency troops to stop the terrific Ger- 
man drives. Now that the enemy’s advance was checked, General 
Pershing desired to carry out the plan, which he had formerly advocated, 
of assembling the best of his divisions for an attack on the Marne 
salient. 

The French favored this counter-attack, and set it in motion along the 
entire western face of the Marne salient. “The First and Second 
American Divisions, with the First French Moroccan Division between 
them, were employed as the spearhead of the main attack, driving 
directly eastward, through the most sensitive portion of the German 
lines, to the heights south of Soissons. The advance began on July 18, 
without the usual brief warning of a preliminary bombardment, and 
these three divisions, at a single bound, broke through the enemy’s 
infantry defenses and overran his artillery, cutting or interrupting the 
German communications leading into the salient. A general withdrawal 
from the Marne was immediately begun by the enemy, who still fought 
stubbornly to prevent disaster. 

“The First Division, throughout four days of constant fighting, 
advanced eleven kilometers, capturing Berzy-le-Sec and the heights 

* Pershing, of. cit., p. 34. 

LIAL AD AGS. 
* Tbid., p. 35. 


SERVICE OF AMERICAN TROOPS AS A WHOLE 197 
above Soissons, and taking some thirty-five hundred prisoners and six- 
ty-eight field guns from the seven German divisions employed against 
Blass} | 

“The Second Division advanced eight kilometers in the first twenty- 
six hours, and by the end of the second day was facing Tigny, having 
captured three thousand prisoners and sixty-six field guns. ... Due 
to the magnificent dash and power displayed on the field of Soissons by 
our First and Second Divisions, the tide of war was definitely turned 
in favor of the Allies.” ? 

By the last of July the Third Division had forced the enemy back 
to the Roucheres Wood.** 

“In the hard fighting from July 18 to August 6, the Germans were 
not only halted in their advance but were driven back from the Marne 
to the Vesle and committed wholly to the defensive. The force of 
American arms had been brought to bear in time to enable the last 
offensive of the enemy to be crushed.” ** 

The possibility of another German advance having been removed, 
the time was opportune to gather the scattered divisions of the Ameri- 
can troops into a single unit under the direct command of General 
Pershing. The American troops were now assembled for the first time, 
and were designated as the First American Army. In the planning of 
a general Allied offensive the First American Army was assigned to 
the Meuse-Argonne sector, extending over a front of 150 kilometers, 
from Port-sur-Seille, east of the Moselle to and including the Argonne 
Forest. The direction of the American attack was to be towards Sedan 
and Mezieres. Several French divisions then in the zone were turned 
over to General Pershing’s command. 

Preliminary to the general Allied advance scheduled for September 
25, General Pershing was assigned the important task of reducing the 
St. Mihiel salient. Employing along the line of the jump-off about 
430,000 American troops and 70,000 French, the advance began at dawn 
on September 12. “The rapidity with which our divisions advanced,” 
says Pershing, “overwhelmed the enemy, and all objectives were reached 
by the afternoon of September 13. . . . We captured sixteen thousand 
prisoners, four hundred and forty-three guns, and large stores of mate- 
rial and supplies.’ 7° 


™ Pershing, op. cit., p. 36. 
ee ibid,, p. 36. 
Oe DIG)» Do30s 
m1: D.242. 


198 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





General Pershing was now able to withdraw most of his divisions 
from the St. Mihiel region and to concentrate them on the Meuse-Ar- 
gonne front fora great Allied convergent attack on the German defenses 
in this region. The territory behind the German line, because of its 
great railway line into Sedan, formed the pivot of German operations 
in northern France. The strategic importance of the territory caused the 
Germans to fortify it by a series of positions twenty kilometers or more 
in depth.*® 

The American troops now facing this line numbered about 1,000,000 
men,'? and they made the jump-off at dawn on September 26, and, 
from that time to the signing of the Armistice, November 11, a desperate 
and almost continuous battle was in progress. All along the line the 
German forces were beaten back. In about ten days the greater part 
of the Argonne Forest was captured, also the heights dominating 
Sedan; and the enemy’s line of communication was cut.‘® Forty-seven 
different German divisions had been beaten. The First American Army 
suffered a loss of 117,000 men killed or wounded. It captured 26,000 
prisoners, 847 cannon, 3,000 machine guns, and large quantities of 
midtenalt? 

While fhis battle was in progress, General Pershing organized a 
Second American Army under command of Lieutenant General Robert 
L. Bullard, and this army on October 12 was assigned to the portion 
of the American front extending from Port-sur-Seille, east of the 
Moselle to Bresnes-en-Woevre, southeast of Verdun. This army was 
to strike in the direction of the Briey iron basis. Under instructions 
from General Pershing, the Second Army was ordered to advance along 
the entire front. The attack began on November 8, but lasted only three 
days, being terminated by the signing of the Armistice, November 11.?° 

“In the face of the stiff resistance offered by the enemy,” says 
Pershing, “and with the limited number of troops at the disposal of the 
Second Army, the gains realized reflected great credit on the divi- 
sions concerned.,”’ 7 

* Pershing, Op. cit., p. 44. 
™ Tbid., p. 48. 
SPLDid., .Pi-s52: 
set) Bop Fe SO vg ie 
in Meets ee eB 
” [bid.; p. 53. 


CHAPTER 28 
SERVICE OF THE 369TH INFANTRY 


Employment in Building Terminals at St. Nazaire, January, 1918—Experience of 
the Third Battalion in Guarding German Prisoners in Brittany—The Taking 
Over of a Sector in the Champagne District—Transference to the Line 
Below Minancourt in June—The Last German Drive, July 15—Participation 
in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of September 26 


HE main body of Negro troops were organized as a unit under the 

g2nd Division, the part of which in the war is stated in another 
chapter. But in addition to the service of this division, there were 
four Negro regiments which upon arriving in France were brigaded 
with French troops, and employed in various sectors of the battle-line 
from the Vosges Mountains in the east to the Belgian front in the 
west. ‘These four regiments arrived in France earlier than the g2nd 
Division, and were occupying sectors of the battle-line during the 
severest and most discouraging stages of the war, when the Germans 
were making their last and most desperate drives toward Paris. All 
of these regiments had taken some part in the war before the tide was 
turned in favor of the Allies in the last German drive of July 15, 1978. 

The first of these regiments to arrive in France was the 369th In- 
fantry, formerly a unit of the New York National Guard. After pre- 
liminary training at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, the regiment 
was ordered overseas and arrived at Brest, on December 28, 1917. 

At this time there was pressing need of workmen to assist in the 
building of docks and railway terminals at St. Nazaire, where most of 
the American troops and supplies were hereafter to be landed. The 
regiment was thereforetransferred to this port, and its first service was 
in constructing this terminal, and in unloading ships. 

Early in January, 1918, the 3rd Battalion of this regiment was dis- 
patched to Colquidan, in Brittany, to guard a German prison-camp. 
Three weeks later this battalion was ordered to join the rest of the 
regiment at Givry-en-Argonne. From this station batches of picked 
men of the.regiment were sent to a French divisional training-school. 

In May the regiment was~sent to Main de Massiges, a part of the 

199 


200 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


French line, where small batches of the men accompanied French 
soldiers for practical training in trench warfare and raiding. 

After about two weeks of this kind of training, the regiment was 
transferred to Bois d’ Hause, Champagne district, where for the first time 
the regiment took over a sector. While the regiment was occupying this 
sector the Germans were pushing forward their great offensive initiated 
March I5. 

By June 1 the drive toward Paris had been stopped at Chateau- 
Thierry with the aid of American troops, and on June 4, some counter- 
attacks were launched, one of which in the sector held by the Americans, 
led to the capture of Belleau Woods. 

The Negro 369th regiment took part in the fighting in Belleau Woods 
on June 6. 

In expectation of another German drive, the 369th was transferred 
to the line below Minancourt, near Butte de Mesnil. 

Lieutenant John Richards, a Northern man, in command of a 
machine-gun company of this regiment, gives an amusing account of a 
stampede of his men when they were going forward to occupy an ad- 
vanced line of trenches. 

“The battalion to which I was assigned,” he says, “was in what 
is called the intermediate position, in trenches and dugouts, two kilo- 
meters behind another battalion which held the front-line trenches. . . . 

“Aside from the shelling, which we avoided by staying in our dug- 
outs and by wasting no time when moving in the trenches, my first real 
experience in this sector came a few days later, when we moved up 
to relieve the battalion in the front-line position. Making a relief in 
the trenches is always nervous work. In the regular trench parallels 
that stretch across the line of fire, there is good protection against 
hostile artillery; but in the long boyaus that lead toward the front, 
there is very little shelter. Moreover, the guns of the enemy are care- 
fully registered on these communication trenches. All movement must 
be at night, and accomplished quietly; for if the Germans suspect that 
a relief is in progress, there will be slaughter among the long lines 
moving out or in, in single file. 

“The night of this relief was clear and still; the German guns were 
silent for once. Rumor was afloat of a tunnel which the enemy were 
building toward our lines. There is something unpleasant about the 
idea of tunnels, suggesting sudden explosions of hidden mines. We 
were half a mile behind the front line, moving slowly up the boyau, or 
communication trench. I was in charge of a column of seventy-five 


SERVICE OF THE 369TH INFANTRY 201 





men, walking behind them, according to my orders, in case there should 
be stragglers. At the head of the column were a poilu guide whom the 
boys did not know and one of our own sergeants. We crawled along, 
each man bent on not losing sight of the man in front of him... . 

“We were half-way to the front lines when suddenly there was a 
shout, a rush; and I was knocked flat by my attachment moving to 
the rear at triple time. I have never seen living men move faster. 
They threw off their packs, they threw away their guns. I got up 
blaspheming, with my face full of mud, tried to stem the rush, and was 
borne back by it, wondering frantically if I ought to use my pistol. I 
pursued my small command and found it scattered over the country 
half a mile back. Knowing almost no names, and bewildered by the 
dark, I spent a nightmare half-hour, cursing and cajoling them to get 
into line again. This time I took care to go ahead, and we moved for- 
ward, picking up the guns and packs, relieving the troops in the front 
line two hours later than we should have. 

“What had happened was this: the column had come to a gully 
with a bridge across it; the bridge had a roof. It looked like a dark 
hole. Some one at the head of the line had probably whispered, “Ma 
Lawd, dat am de Boche tunnel!’ then stampeded. The Germans had not 
fired a shell; the hole which they had seen was innocent of sound or 
movement—and these were seasoned troops! As for the blunder of 
having no officer at the head of the files, there was another lieutenant 
who should have been there, but who lost himself in the labyrinth of 
the trenches, showing up very wild-eyed next morning... . 

“All this time we were in what might be called an average sector. 
There was plenty of healthy artillery activity and frequent raids, but 
no fighting of the intensity that characterized the sectors farther to the 
west. The raids were often unsuccessful. When we took a prisoner 
or two, we were very happy. As for losing prisoners, we never did. 
Several times our men were taken. Such, however, was their dread of 
what would happen to them behind the German lines, that their captors 
could never hold them. Agile as panthers, and with the same hair- 
trigger quality that caused my downfall the night that someone saw a 
Boche tunnel in a harmless bridge, they always broke away and got 
back to our lines. I believe it is true that this regiment has never had 
a single soldier taken and kept prisoner. Moreover, in these same 
trenches during the month of July they withstood successfully a terrific 
bombardment and a strong attack.” + 

*“Some Experiences with Colored Soldiers,” Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1919. 


202 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


The night before the German drive of July 15, some patrols of 
the 369th Infantry captured several German prisoners who gave to 
the Allies the information that the German army would begin its drive 
the next day. 

“General Gouraud, who commanded the Fourth French Army, took 
his troops out of the front line trenches over a front of 50 kilometers, 
and when the attack occurred he had the 369th on one flank of a 50- 
kilometer line, and the old 69th New York, a part of the Rainbow 
Division, on the other. When the German fire fell on these front line 
trenches for five hours and twenty minutes, the shells fell on empty 
trenches except for a few patrols left in reinforced trenches with signal 
rockets, gas shells, and a few machine guns. When the hour for the 
German infantry attack came, these patrols let off their gas bombs and 
signal rockets and the massed allied artillery let loose on the massed 
Germans, who were literally smashed and never got through to the 
second line of the 369th.” ? 

After the German drive of July 15 had spent its force, the 369th 
was put on the line near Maison-en-Champagne. On August 12, while 
a unit of the 369th Infantry was occupying the trenches in this sector, 
a German raiding party rushed the trenches, and, after firing upon the 
men and assaulting them with trench knives and clubs, captured five 
privates and a lieutenant. When the victorious raiders were making 
their way back to their own trenches, Sergeant Bill Butler, from Salis- 
bury, Maryland, belonging to Company L, happened to be occupying 
a forward post and saw that the party would have to pass near him. 

“The Negro sergeant waited until the Germans were close to his 
post, then opened fire upon them with his automatic rifle. He kept the 
stream of lead upon the raiders until ten of the number had been killed. 
Then he went forth and took the German lieutenant, who was slightly 
wounded, a prisoner, released the American lieutenant and five other 
prisoners, and returned to the American lines with his prisoner and the 
rescued party.’ * 

When General Pershing launched his great Meuse-Argonne offensive 
of September 26, the 369th Regiment was transferred from the com- 
mand of the 16th French Division to the 161st French Division and 
made the jump-off at the hour when the offensive started. The 369th 
was supported by the Moroccans on its left, and the French on its 


*Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 208. 
* Ibid., p. 211. 


SERVICE OF THE 369TH INFANTRY 203 





right. During the first day’s fighting in the Argonne, a unit of the 
369th came to the edge of a swamp when the German machine-guns 
began to open fire, and, of the fifty-eight of the unit caught in the 
trap, only eight escaped being killed or wounded. Corporal Elmer Earl 
of Middletown, New York, belonging to Company K, made a number 
of trips to the swamp and brought back about a dozen wounded men. 

Major L’Esperance says: “The heaviest fighting was on September 
26, 1918, when we went into action with twenty officers and 700 men 
in our battalion in the morning, and at the close we had seven officers 
and 150 men left. Our boys advanced steadily like seasoned veterans, 
and never lost a foot of ground they had taken or let a prisoner es- 
cape.” * In spite of the heavy losses the 369th pressed on, following 
the general advance and driving the Germans back for a distance of 
seven kilometers. 

Colonel Hayward, in a letter to Private Henry Johnson’s wife, tells 
her how her husband and another private, Needham Roberts, won the 
French Croix de Guerre, for heroic conduct in a skirmish in no man’s 
land: 

“He and Private Needham Roberts were on guard together at a 
small outpost on the front line trench near the German lines, and 
during the night a strong raiding party of Germans numbering from 
twelve to twenty, judging by the weapons, clothing and paraphernalia 
they left behind and by their footprints, stole across no man’s land 
and made a surprise attack in the dead of the night on our two brave 
soldiers. 

“We had learned some time ago from captured German prisoners 
that the Germans had heard of the regiment of Black Americans in 
this sector, and the German officers had told their men how easy to 
combat and capture them it would be. So this raiding party came over, 
and, on the contrary, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts attended 
very strictly to their duties. At the beginning of the attack the Ger- 
mans fired a volley of bullets and grenades and both of the boys were 
wounded, your husband three times and Roberts twice, then the Ger- 
mans rushed the post, expecting to make an easy capture. In spite of 
their wounds, the two boys waited coolly and courageously and when 
the Germans were within striking distance opened fire, your husband 
with his rifle and Private Roberts from his helpless position on the 
ground, with hand grenades. But the German raiding party came on 

* Scott, op. cit., p. 278. 


204. THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


in spite of their wounded and in a few seconds our boys were at grips 
with the terrible foe in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, in which 
the enemy outnumbered them ten to one. 

“The boys inflicted great loss on the enemy, but Roberts was over- 
powered and about to be carried away when your husband, who had 
used up all of the cartridges in the magazine of his rifle, and had 
knocked one German down with the butt end of it, drew his bolo from 
his belt. A bolo is a short, heavy weapon carried by the American sol- 
dier, with the edge of a razor, the weight of a cleaver and the point of a 
butcher knife. He rushed to the rescue of his former comrade, and 
fighting desperately, opened with his bolo the head of the German 
who was throttling Roberts, and turned to the boche who had Roberts 
by the feet, plunging the bolo into the German’s bowels. This one was 
the leader of the German party, and on receiving what must have been 
this mortal wound, exclaimed in American English, without a trace of 
accent, ‘Oh, the son of a rotime yan 

“Henry laid about him right and left with his heavy knife, and 
Roberts, released from the grasp of the scoundrels, began again to 
throw hand grenades and exploded them in their midst, and the Ger- 
mans, doubtless thinking it was a host instead of two brave Colored 
boys fighting like tigers at bay, picked up their dead and wounded and 
slunk away, leaving many weapons and part of their shot-riddled cloth- 
ing, and leaving a trail of blood, which we followed at dawn near to 
their lines. We feel certain that one of the enemy was killed by rifle 
fire, two by your husband’s bolo, one by grenades thrown by Private 
Roberts and several others grievously wounded.” ® 

* Scott, op. cit., pp. 257-8. 





CHAPTER 209 
SERVICE OF THE 370TH INFANTRY 


Occupation of a St. Mihiel Sector June 21—Transference to Argonne Forest 
July 4—To the Soissons Sector in August—And to the Oise-Aisne Canal in 
September—Participation in the Allied Offensive of September and October 
Which Drove the Germans across the Belgian Border 


HE 370th Infantry was another unit of colored troops which did 

not belong to the g2nd Division, but remained brigaded with 
French divisions throughout its stay in France. This unit was formerly 
the 8th Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, and while in France 
came to be called, by the Germans, ‘Black Devils,” and by the French, 
“Partridges,’ because of their proud bearing. 

This infantry regiment went into training at Camp Logan, Texas, 
in August, 1917. After arriving in France and undergoing six weeks’ 
training under French instructors, the regiment was ready for action 
and on June 11, 1918, was ordered to Morvillars (Haut Rhin) where it 
was relieved of all of its American equipment and re-equipped with 
French arms, including rifles, pistols, helmets, machine guns, horses, 
wagons, and even French rations, which the colored soldiers regarded 
as scant compared to those to which they had been accustomed. Thence 
the regiment was distributed along the Meuse river at Nancois-le-Petit, 
Trouville, and Velaines. On June 21 the regiment was sent to Han- 
Bislee, a portion of the St. Mihiel sector. “This being the first time 
the regiment had occupied positions in the line, it was deemed advis- 
able by the Division Commander to intermingle the 370th with French 
troops, in order that officers and men might observe and profit by close 
association with veteran French troops. Thus, the Ist and znd Bat- 
talions, commanded by Majors Rufus M. Stokes and Charles L. Hunt 
respectively, were intermingled with platoons and companies of French 
battalions. Except for occasional shelling and rifle and machine-gun 
fire of the enemy nothing of interest occurred while in this sector, 
and there were no casualties.” * 

On July 4, the regiment was withdrawn from the St. Mihiel sector 


*Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 217. 
205 


206 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





and sent to the Argonne Forest, where it occupied a sector which, 
except on one or two occasions, was exceptionally quiet. Here the 
regiment suffered its first casualty in the fall of a private, Robert E. 
Lee, member of a machine-gun company. 

In the meantime the Germans were launching their last great drive, 
July 15, and were bending the Allied line back toward Paris. 

On August 4 the 370th Infantry participated in its first offensive 
when a mortar platoon took part in a raid having for its object the 
filling in of the gaps in the French artillery barrage. For service in 
this raid Lieutenant Robert A. Ward and the other members of the 
platoon were highly commended-by the French commander. 

On August 16, the 370th was relieved of its position in the Argonne 
Forest and sent for rest behind the lines near Bar-le-Duc. After a 
rest of fifteen days the regiment was moved forward to positions in 
the Soissons sector. At this time the Allies had begun their counter- 
attack, July 18, winning the Second Battle of the Marne and driving 
the Germans out of the Marne salient back to the Vesle. The tide 
of battle had turned, and thenceforward to November 11 the Germans 
were everywhere on the defensive and yielding ground. 

On September 16, four companies of the 370th Infantry joined in 
the Allied advance which resulted in the capture of the enemy’s strong 
positions in front of Mont-des-Singes. “One platoon of Company F 
under command of Sergeant Matthew Jenkins especially distinguished 
itself by capturing a large section of the enemy works, turning their 
own guns on them and holding the position for thirty-six hours without 
food or water, until assistance came and the position was strengthened. 
For this meritorious work in this engagement Sergeant Jenkins received 
both the American Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix 
de Guerre.” ? 

On the Soissons front five companies of the 370th distinguished 
themselves by capturing from the Germans and holding Hill 304. 

After a rest in several places of reserve, the 370th Infantry was 
assembled for the first time as a unit and took over on September 21 
a full regimental sector on the Oise-Aisne Canal. A general attack along 
this front began on September 27, and the 370th took part in the vari- 
ous engagements which culminated on October 4 in driving the enemy 
across the canal. 

On the first day of this battle, September 27, the 3rd Batallion 
of the 370th drove the Germans back to the Ailette Canal where they 

*Scott, op. cit., p. 218. 


SERVICE OF THE 370TH INFANTRY 207 


made a stand. “The fighting here was fierce,’ says Lieutenant-Colonel 
Duncan, the colored commander of the battalion. ‘The Germans had 
placed barbed wire entanglements in the canal, but we avoided these with 
pontoon bridges and continued our drive. We reached what was known 
as Mont-des-Singes or ‘Monkey Mountain’ and the German line, near 
a narrow-gauge railroad. Here we encountered more concrete emplace- 
ments, dugouts, and barbed wire, and in getting to the Germans every 
man of us had to climb up on the railroad embankment, where we were 
fair marks for any kind of shell the Germans sent over. Naturally we 
lost many of our men.” # 

On October 7, following an artillery bombardment, three raiding 
parties went out into the triangle formed by the Oise-Aisne Canal, a 
railroad and the Vauxaillon-Bois de Mortier highway. ‘The mission 
of one of these raiding parties,’ says Scott, ““was to capture prisoners. 
One of these parties under command of Ist Lieutenant Elisha C. Lane 
entered the triangle, gained the trenches along the south bank of the 
canal and ejected the enemy after a hand-grenade fight, Lieutenant Lane 
and two enlisted men being wounded. This party was unable to hold 
this trench on account of its being exposed to enfilade fire from two 
directions. The other two patrols established themselves along the 
railroad and sent small patrols into the triangle, but were unable to 
establish themselves therein. No prisoners were captured.” * 

During the night of October 7 and 8, Company F of the 2nd 
Battalion, which had been holding a line near La Folie l’Ecluse on the 
canal, was unable to hold out against the severe assaults of the enemy 
and Company C of the 1st Battalion was sent forward to relieve it. In 
spite of the efforts of Company C to hold a position in the triangle it was 
unable to do so for the same reason as Company F.° 

In a new general offensive which was begun on October 12, with a 
view to hastening the retirement of the Germans along the western line 
of battle, the various units of the 370th Infantry alternately took an 
active part in the advance. The retreating enemy was fighting only a 
rearguard battle, but its machine-gun nests made the Allied advance 
full of difficulty and danger. The Negro troops in the various en- 
gagements from October 12 to November 11 generally attained their 
objectives, and shared fully in the Allied achievement of driving the 
Germans across the Belgian border. 

* Scott, op. cit., p. 229. 

* Tbid., p. 220. 

*Tbid., p. 221. 


CHAT Phase 
SERVICE OF THE 371ST REGIMENT 
Activities Near Verdun—In the Meuse-Argonne Drive—Spotlessness of Record 


HE 371st Infantry was organized at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, 

August 31, 1917, and, as Colonel P. L. Miles, its commander, 
says: “was made up mostly of cotton-field Negroes of South Carolina, 
North Carolina, and Tennessee.” + It differed from the later colored 
regiments in having all white officers of the United States Army. At 
this time the training camp for colored officers at Fort Des Moines had 
not begun to issue commissions. The 371st Infantry was more con- 
tinuously in battle than any other colored unit, experienced harder 
fighting and suffered severer losses. It arrived in France on April 23, 
1918, and throughout its service overseas was brigaded with French 
divisions. 

The regiment went into training at Rembercourt and vicinity, about 
thirty kilometers from the citadel of Verdun. Says Colonel Miles: 
“This was within hearing of the guns and close enough to the front to 
require darkened windows at night and rigid air-plane discipline. The 
village of Rembercourt was partially destroyed and the regiment there- 
fore was in the atmosphere of the front from the first. While at the 
Rembercourt area, the regiment underwent a reorganization in order to 
fit it for incorporation in the French division. The American regi- 
ments had but one machine gun company each... . 

“The regiment arrived in its training area on April 28th; had been 
reorganized, taking on French organization and French equipment, arms 
and rations and had progressed to such a degree in its training that on 
June 6, 1918, it began a march to the St. Mihiel sector to relieve the 
regiment of French troops then opposite the tip of the German salient. 
While the regimental commander, who had gone on ahead of the regi- 
ment, was making his reconnoissance preparatory to the relief, the or- 
ders were changed and the regiment was sent to the Hill 304 Sector, 
just west of Dead Man’s Hill in the Verdun area. This is when the 


* Letter to the author, July 21, 1925. 
208 


SERVICE OF THE 371ST REGIMENT 209 


regiment became a part of the 157th French Division. On arrival, 
the regiment went into corps reserve on the second line in the vicinity 
of Betlainsville and on June 16th took over a regimental sector in the 
first line. 

“While the regiment was in the training area, part of the officers 
were sent to visit the front lines for a few days. While the regimental 
commander and about twenty-five other officers of the regiment were 
making this visit in the very 304 Sector, which the 157th Division after- 
wards occupied, the Germans initiated their second grand attack of the 
year, the one beginning May 9g, 1918, which ultimately seriously threat- 
ened Paris. 

“In order to distract attention from the main attack, a demonstra- 
tion against Verdun was made by the Germans. German raids were 
put down on the regimental sectors, and the right and left of the one 
the officers of the regiment were visiting, and a considerable attack 
against Fort Douaumont was staged. Fort Douaumont is east of the 
Meuse, while the 304 Hill is west of that river, but the attack was in 
sight. This was an unusual and valuable experience for an initial visit- 
ing of the trenches. 

“The 371st Infantry remained in the front line in the Avocourt 
sub-sector of the divisional 304 Sector until September 16, 1918, when 
it was relieved by American troops. The limits of the front were 
changed several times but the ruined town of Avocourt was always 
included in our front. During practically the whole of this time two 
battalions were in the front line and one in regimental or division 
reserve. 

“This part of the line was not very active at this time. There 
was artillery firing daily and machine-gun firing occasionally, especially 
at night. There were also nightly patrols and a few raids, but the 
casualties suffered by the regiment were remarkably few during this 
period. It is a remarkable fact that in all the months of constant first 
line service of this regiment, it was never raided by the enemy, al- 
though the regiment that relieved it in September was raided the sec- 
ond night after the 371Ist’s departure. This speaks well for the regi- 
ment’s trench discipline. 

“The 37I1st was taken to an area south of St. Menhould after its 
relief from three months’ continuous service in the Avocourt sub- 
sector and after a sojourn there of one day began its night march to 
the front to participate in the grand offensive of September 26, 
TLCS e's" «> 


210 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“The 371st attacked along the railroad running north through Mon- 
thois and Vouziers. This is the first railroad you find on the map west 
of the Argonne Forest. The regiment attacked on a front of about one 
kilometer, battalions in column. ‘The Ist Battalion led and took the 
brunt of the losses on the first day. We were engaged nearly the whole 
day in breaking through the remaining 500 yards or so of trenches in 
the German first position. On the second day, the 3rd Battalion led, 
the 1st Batallion being brought back to regimental reserve. The regi- 
ment made a rapid advance on this day in the open, but suffered con- 
siderable losses from artillery fire and machine guns used by the enemy 
in delaying positions. Busey Farm, Ardeuil and Montfauxelles were 
captured this day. On the following day the regiment advanced, cap- 
turing Vieres Farm, about three kilometers south of Monthois. 

“The 371st Infantry made a unique record in this battle. During 
its rapid advance the Germans made frantic efforts to slow down the 
advance, and several of their air planes flew very low, machine gunning 
the regiment. As a consequence, however, the regiment shot down three 
hostile planes during this advance. Many inquiries of both French 
and American commanders have convinced me that this is a unique 
record,)/# 

Major Charles E. Greenough, commander of the 2nd Battalion of 
the regiment, in a letter to the author, June 20, 1926, describes the 
action of his unit as follows: 

“After the battle was well under way we went forward to what had 
been the front line of the French trenches where we spent the night on 
the ground. The following day we advanced to the relief of the 
Moroccans—those fierce black troops of France, whose very name put 
the fear of death into the heart of the enemy. Our mission was to 
continue the attack from the point where the Moroccans had stopped— 
stopped only because there were no more of them left to go on. We 
reached and passed beyond Ripond. It was very dark, but towards 
morning we pushed on about a mile where we were held up by machine- 
gun fire. The 3rd and my 2nd Battalions received orders to retire 
behind the crest of a hill, a short distance to the rear. There we spent 
the day, in the course of which we received a quantity of high explosives 
and gas shells. It was raining, and as night approached the rain in- 
creased. The roads were in terrible shape, so our rolling-kitchens did 
not catch up and we ate some of our reserve rations. 


* Letter to the author, July 21, 1925. 


SERVICE OF THE 371ST REGIMENT 211 


“Towards morning, the 2nd Battalion was ordered to advance and 
take a certain position before dawn, which it did. After daybreak we 
moved forward again and were about to dig in when the whole regiment 
received new orders. We were to advance in artillery formation as far 
as possible and drive the enemy before us. The charge was made and 
we started in the face of a most terrific bombardment. 

“Our casualties were heavy, but we were able to gain a number of 
kilometers that day before we were held up because of trouble with our 
artillery support. We had literally waded through the enemy. At one 
point we forded a small river and crossed a flooded area some four 
hundred yards in width. Darkness came on and we were practically 
surrounded on three sides by the enemy, and their machine guns sniped 
us continuously from the rear of our flanks, as well as from our front. 
During the night support came up and our flanks were protected. 

“We received orders to go forward again at dawn, and during the 
day advanced as far as a farm a little to the south of Monthois when 
we were again held up by a most destructive artillery and machine-gun 
fire. The 2nd Battalion and the 3rd Battalion were each reduced to the 
strength of little more than a company. The Ist Battalion, then in 
reserve, was in about the same condition.” 

During this day’s fighting Major Greenough was wounded and 
evacuated to a hospital. 

Captain W. R. Richey of Laurens, South Carolina, says in refer- 
ence to the action of his company on September 27: “‘At 10 o’clock 
Sunday morning we were ordered to advance up the valley, but in the 
meantime an enemy plane flew down low, discovered our position, and 
signalled his artillery, which opened on us and every minute seemed to 
be the last one. However, by rifle fire we brought the plane down, 
killing the pilot and observer. 

“Long before we reached the village we could see the cowards 
running up a steep hill beyond, leaving lots of machine guns to stick 
out, and, believe me, when we reached our objective and rounded up 
the machine gunners, the men of the 37Ist made quick work of them. 

“In all, during the two days, Sunday and Monday, our battalion 
advanced about five miles without the aid of a single friendly artillery 
shot or any other help. We killed lots of Germans, captured lots of 
them, and also captured any quantity of material and several big guns. 

“I am proud of all my officers and all of my men. The whole regi- 
ment fought like veterans, and with a fierceness equal to any white 


212 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


regiment. This was the first time any of them had been under aimed 
shell and machine-gun fire and they stood it like moss-covered old- 
timers. They never flinched nor showed the least sign of fear. All 
that was necessary was to tell them to go and they went. Lots were 
killed and wounded, but they will go down in history as brave 
soldiers.” * 

In a letter to the author, September 16, 1925, Captain Richey says 
that his Company L assaulted with 195 men, the strength of a company 
under French organization. “At the end of the fighting on September 
30th, all the officers had been wounded and but 38 men remained fit 
for duty.” ‘ 

“In October,’ says Colonel Mininger, “we occupied front line 
trenches in the Vosges where we were on the mountain tops when the 
Armistice was signed.” ¢ 

The regiment suffered, mostly in three days, the loss of 1,065 out 
of 2,384 actually engaged. “It never lost a prisoner,” says Colonel 
Miles, “in nearly five months of front line service, although it took 
many.” For its services in this battle, the regiment received the high- 
est citation given by the French, the Croix de Guerre with palm, and its 
colors were decorated at a ceremony in Brest a few days prior to its 
embarkation for home. The citation says: “371st Regiment of In- 
fantry. Displayed, in the course of the first fighting in which it par- 
ticipated, all the qualities of daring and bravery characteristic of first- 
rate storm troops. Under command of Colonel Miles it launched, 
with fine dash and utter contempt of danger, an attack on an obstinately 
defended position, captured it after desperate fighting and under ex- 
ceptionally heavy machine-gun fire. Continuing its advance, in spite of 
enemy artillery fire which entailed severe losses, captured many pris- 
oners, beside cannon, machine guns, and important quantities of ma- 
teriany 

In addition to the regimental citations there were 146 individual 
citations for acts of heroism. 

Lieutenant John B. Smith of Greenville, South Carolina, speaking 
of the fighting of the 371st in the Argonne Forest, says: “We ad- 
vanced seven kilometers one day, getting ahead of the line. The next 
day we were subjected to a terrific counter-attack. The enemy used 
gas, and airplanes and rushed us with infantry and machine guns. We 
held our ground for seven hours, fighting part of the time with our 


*Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 237. 
“Letter to the author, July 15, 1925. 


SERVICE OF THE 371ST REGIMENT 213 


gas masks on. It was as severe a test as any soldier ever had, but 
our men never faltered once, although our casualties were very heavy 
that day. No soldier could have behaved any better under adverse 
circumstances.” ° 

One of the Negro soldiers, Frank Washington of Edgefield, South 
Carolina, in giving an account of his experience in the Champagne sec- 
tor, said: “I went over the top in the fighting on September 29 and 
30. We advanced after the usual barrage had been laid down for 
us. We went up to the Germans, and my platoon found itself under 
the fire of three machine-guns. One of these guns was in front 
and running like a millrace. The other two kept a-piling into us 
from the flanks, and the losses were mounting. We got the front one. 
Its crew surrendered and we stopped. The other guns kept right 
on going, but we got them, too. 

“It was while we were attacking the guns on our flanks that I 
was wounded. Ordinary bullets are bad enough but the one that hit 
me was an explosive bullet. 

“While I was knocked down, it was safer to stay down. Those 
machine guns kept right on pumping, not the ones we captured, but 
others. The wind they stirred up around your face kept you cool 
all the time. I finally started back, but found myself in a Ger- 
man barrage. It was shrapnel in front of me and machine guns in 
back of me. I lay right down and had a heart-to-heart chat with St. 
Peter. I never expected to get home again.” ° 

James McKinney of Greenville, South Carolina, who was wounded 
in the battle, relates his experience as follows: “They turned loose 
everything they had to offer, and the storm of lead and steel got a 
lot of our men. Still we followed our officers into the devils’ trenches. 
A few of the Germans tried to fight with their bayonets, but we. 
could all box pretty well, and boxing works with the bayonet. A 
few feints and then the death-stroke was the rule. Most of the Huns 
quit as soon as we got at them. Even the ones that had been on the 
machine guns yelled for us to spare them. 

“While we were advancing we worked along low and took all 
available cover against the machine-gun fire directed against us. As 
soon as we came within range we opened fire with hand grenades 
and accounted for the machine-gun nests. I saw one of the gunners 
chained to their posts. Their barbed wire gave us trouble. Our 


*Quoted by Scott, op. cit., p. 238. 
FScott, of. cit,, p. 235. 


214 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


artillery cut it up pretty badly, but still it was a pretty strong barrier 
against the advancing infantry. When we got tangled up in the wire, 
Fritz would play with his rifles. I’ve seen fellows get into a Ger- 
man trench with their uniforms flying in shreds.” 7 


* Scott, op. cit., p. 236. 


CHAPTER 31 
SERVICE OF THE 372ND REGIMENT 


Occupation of Line in Argonne Forest—Trouble with Colored Officers—Dis- 
charge or Transference of Many Colored Officers—Occupation of Line in 
the Champagne Sector—Good Account of Themselves Given in the September 
26th Offensive 


CCORDING to data written by Colonel Herschel Tupes: 
“The 372nd U. S. Infantry was organized at Camp Stuart, 
Virginia, on or about January 1, 1918, from the following units of 
colored national guard troops: 


Separate Battalion of Infantry, District of Columbia ; 
Separate Battalion of Infantry, Ohio; 

Separate Company of Infantry, Connecticut ; 
Separate Company of Infantry, Massachusetts ; 
Separate Company of Infantry, Maryland; 

Separate Company of Infantry, Tennessee. 


“Upon organization these units retained their colored officers. The 
additional officers required for the field and staff and for the additional 
regimental units were supplied by the War Department and were white 
officers excepting the chaplains, dental surgeons and most of the sur- 
geons, who were colored. The enlisted personnel assigned to the regi- 
ment were all colored. While upon organization the officer personnel 
of the regiment was largely colored the policy of replacements of 
the officer personnel of this regiment, adopted by General Headquarters 
of the A. E. F., in August, 1918, was to assign white officers in 
vacancies created by the necessary evacuations of the colored officers ; 
and the result of this policy was that before the close of 1918 all com- 
batant officers were white. 

“Upon the arrival of the regiment in France it was permanently 
assigned to the French Army and was thereupon reorganized and 
equipped as a French regiment of infantry; but matters of clothing, 
pay, uniforms and administration generally continued under the A. E. F. 

215 


216 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“After arrival at St. Nazaire, France, the regiment proceeded 
about April 18, 1918, to Conde-en-barrois, where it was trained under 
the supervision of the 13th French Army Corps. 

“On June Ist the regiment was assigned to the 63rd French Di- 
vision and from June 5th to June 30th, 1918, occupied the Sub-Sector 
Argonne Quest.” ? 

Early in June two battalions of the regiment were sent forward 
into the trenches. “Shortly after midnight on the fourth of June 
began the march to the front line trenches by these black defenders 
of Democracy, whose only knowledge of warfare was what they had 
read in histories and other books. The spectacle presented by this 
column was a most grim one. As far as one could see was a long 
line of soldiers, half bent forward with the weight of their French 
packs and other luggage. Ration bags filled with hard-tack and 
canned meat dangled from either side, while their gas masks, canteens 
and grenade carriers, axes and shovels which formed the rest of their 
equipment, occupied the remaining space so that very little of the 
individual could be seen.” ? 

On June 27, the 372nd was marched to the Vauquois sub-sector of 
Verdun. This was a wooded region where there was little patrolling 
and “no attempts to make a raid on either side.” * Here three colored 
officers were relieved from duty for insubordination. The morale of 
the regiment was bad, and the commanding general of the division 
recommended the withdrawal of the regiment until the causes of the 
trouble could be removed.* On July 13 the French and white Ameri- 
can troops on this front made a successful advance, but, for reasons 
not apparent, the 372nd remained inactive,® and on the 18th was moved 
back to Siory-la-Perche, eight miles from Verdun, for rest.® 

On July 26 the regiment was moved to Hill 304 near Montzeville, 
northwest side of Verdun. The trenches in this sector were thinly 
occupied on both sides. No hard fighting was expected and “patrolling 
was the most important function of this sector.’ ... For two weeks 
no guns were heard on either side.’® Once, about August 8, the 


*Notes furnished to the author, July 7, 1925. 

7 Mason and Furr, With the Red Hand in France, p. 56. 
PID. 73. 

* Ibid., p. 76. 

fl bid. Sapo: 

SL Didi. Dee7Ox 

"Tbid., p. 87. 

®Tbid., p. 88. 


SERVICE OF THE 372ND REGIMENT 217 


slopes of Hill 304 were shelled, but in this instance no one was 
killed.® 

Monroe Mason and Arthur Furr, colored men, writing of the 372nd, 
said: “During the entire seven weeks of our occupation in this sec- 
tor we failed to take any prisoners.” *° Here at Hill 304 there was 
much friction between the men and the officers and between the colored 
and white officers. A military tribunal was set up to investigate the 
situation, and the colored officers were placed on trial. “Many off- 
cers were found inefficient for military duty, either because of a lack 
of mental capacity or of insufficient military training. In many cases 
a discharge was recommended, and in most of them transfers were 
ordered,’’ ++ 

“From September roth,’ says Colonel Tupes, “the regiment was 
again nominally in reserve but was actually being moved by march- 
ing, by truck and by train, together with the remainder of the 157th 
French Division, which was enroute to join the 9th Corps of the 4th 
French Army, under General Gouraud, on the Champagne front. 
(Hans.) Movements were made at night. Daylight hours were 
utilized in tactical training for open warfare, under the careful super- 
vision of the commanders in our French Division. We drew so 
close to the enemy’s lines that daylight training ceased on account 
of hostile observation. Then, on September 25, the French Corps 
Commander made the briefest of inspections. Coming up to the 
regimental commander he said: ‘Colonel, you will join in the attack. 
I have the utmost confidence in your regiment.’ And then he was gone. 
No tedious inspection of personnel and equipment. No question as 
to amount or kind of training, but just to tell us we had _ his 
confidence.” 1° 

On the morning of September 26, two regiments of African soldiers 
and the 369th regiment of American colored troops opened the attack 
on this front. The French together with these colored units leaped out 
of their trenches: “shouting like maniacs and pouring over the em- 
bankments, through the few remaining strands of barbed wire, charged 
the enemy positions, which had been literally torn to pieces by the 
hellish barrage of the preceding night. Many dead and wounded 
Germans were lying about, some still drawing their breath, while others 


° Ibid., p. 91. 

* Tbid., p. 98. 

“ Tbid., p. 100. 

“Notes furnished to the author, July 7, 1925. 


218 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


undertook to defend the remnants of their fortifications. Never was 
there a more appalling sight. The furious Africans plunged onward 
waving their arms and huge knives with fiendish glee, charging Ger- 
man machine-gun nests with absolute disregard of death and injury. 
Although their ranks were seriously depleted by the unerring machine- 
gun fire of the Huns, they drove on, taking one position after another, 
leaving nothing but wounded and dead and utter destruction in their 
wake. The American blacks advanced in a more scientific manner, 
using the wave formation, which made it appear that there were double 
the number of men. They used shell holes and deses: te aid isuined 
trenches as a cover from ie fierce ancisno dived “waa Aer ein oe 
Oiuthe Huns. heyy poured iro ee eee watt rehades into the 
Hun ranks, which were fas: >ecoming thinner and more demoralized, 
Groans of agony, curses, prayers, and all manner of heart-rending 
cries rose up from the lips of the wounded and dying men, but this 
served as a stimulus. With shouts of hatred and vengeance these 
blacks pressed on and finally a heroic charge made a break in the 
Hun lines. Soon they were wildly retreating from the ruthless and 
unmerciful attack of these black men. All morning the battle pro- 
gressed until every German had been driven from the village of Ripont 
and positions in that vicinity.” *% 

At dusk on the same day fresh French soldiers and the American 
372nd colored regiment were ordered forward. The Germans were 
rapidly retreating and their artillery fire was becoming more faint. 
Early on the morning of the 27th, the 372nd arrived at the village 
of Ripont, which had been captured the day before. This regiment 
had met on the way units of the 369th, and some of the Moroccan 
and French soldiers, going back for rest. Shortly before noon on 
September 27, the 3rd Battalion of the 372nd Regiment was ordered 
to open the attack on the new position occupied by the enemy on the 
Créte-des-Observatoires, north of Fontaine-en-Dormoise. 

“Soon they approached the place where the signal was given to 
separate and deploy into assaulting waves. The Germans had evi- 
dently determined to make a stand here for they fought fiercely, 
giving back volley for volley, but the fierceness of the fresh troopers’ 
attack and the timely artillery fire proved too much for the German 
morale, and the ‘kultured’ troops turned again and fled in disorder, 
followed by the bloodthirsty blacks. The stiffest resistance was met 
at Bussy Farms, which was a strong point in the German defense 

* Mason and Furr, op. cit., p. 117. 


SERVICE OF THE 372ND REGIMENT 219 


system, and it was here that many men of the 372nd were killed 
or wounded. The next day the attack was resumed with greater 
fierceness, and the third battalion, reinforced by the first battalion, 
renewed their attack on Bussy Farms. It seemed that the infantry 
could not get the Germans out of the town, and artillery was asked 
POG Oyu 

“Huns had poured machine-gun fire into our ranks and the men fell 
so fast that it looked as if the attack would have to be abandoned 
until more help arrived. However, a number of nervy and brave 
non-commissioned officers reorganized their platoons and charged 
again. At the same time, a barrage opened up, for some new guns 
had been moved in behind our troops and their well-directed fire, to- 
gether with the tenacity of our men, proved too much for the Ger- 
mans, and they again retreated from Bussy Farms, and all along 
the division front. After taking this position the advance became more 
rapid for the next German stronghold was several kilometers away 
in the village of Ardeuil. Several smaller villages had to be taken 
before reaching Ardeuil, among which were Grateuil and Sechault. 
The town of Sechault was taken and lost several times before it 
finally rested in possession of our men. The German batteries poured 
such a hail of iron into the town that the troops were hastily with- 
drawn and took their position outside of the town. Here they were 
ordered to halt until the regiments on our flanks had caught up. A 
sharp wedge had been driven into the enemy ranks and to go any 
farther might have meant capture or complete destruction should the 
enemy attack from either flank. The hardest part of the fighting was 
finished on September 30, when the village of Ardeuil was taken, 
together with enormous supplies and munitions. Our objective was 
Monthois, an important railway center and also a base of supply. The 
German resistance was completely broken, their morale was entirely 
destroyed and the few remaining days of our attack were of a much 
calmer nature. The village of Monthois was partly surrounded on 
October 3rd, and a stiff engagement ensued as the Germans evidently 
wanted to hold this town until they had moved most of their supplies. 
The artillery fire, however, made it impossible for either side to 
occupy the town. From then until the 7th of October there were 
many minor engagements, but the black heroes maintained the posi- 
tions they had taken at such a sacrifice of blood and men. Finally, 
on the night of the sixth and the morning of the seventh of October, 

* Ibid., p. 122. 


220 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





the men were withdrawn and were replaced by the 7oth Regiment of 
French Infantry.” *° 

Sergeant Ira Payne of the District of Columbia, giving an account 
of the fighting of the 372nd at Sechault, tells us that “the Germans 
were picking off the men in my platoon from behind a bush. The 
Germans had several machine guns behind that bush and kept up a 
deadly fire in spite of our rifle fire directed at the bush. We did 
our best to stop those machine guns, but the German aim became so 
accurate that they were picking off five of my men every minute. 
We couldn’t stand for that, so I decided I would get that little machine 
gun nest myself and I went after it. I left our company, detoured, 
and by a piece of luck got behind the bush. I got my rifle into 
action and ‘knocked off’ two of those German machine gunners. That 
ended it. The other Germans couldn’t stand so much excitement. The 
Boches surrendered, and I took them into our trenches as prisoners.” 1° 

During this general advance all combat units not a part of the 
attacking line were held in regimental support. 

“During the operations September 27 to October 7, 1918,” says 
Colonel Tupes, “the following battle casualties were sustained by the 
372nd Infantry: 

“Killed: seven officers; seventy-four enlisted men. 

“Wounded: 32 officers; 435 enlisted men. 

“Three officers died of wounds after evacuation. 

“After these operations in the 4th Army the following approved 
citation of the 372nd Infantry was published in orders of the French 
Army: 

““Gave proof, during its first engagement, of the finest qualities 
of bravery and daring which are the virtues of assaulting troops. 
Under the orders of Colonel Tupes dashed with superb gallantry 
and admirable scorn of danger to the assault of a position continuously 
defended by the enemy, taking it by storm under an exceptionally 
violent machine-gun fire. Continued the progression in spite of enemy 
artillery fire and very severe losses. They made numerous prisoners, 
captured cannons, machine guns and important war material.’ 

“Upon being relieved from operations with the 4th Army, the 
157th French Division was sent to occupy a rest sector on the Alsace 
Front located several kilometers east of the village of San Die, in 
the Vosges, the 372nd Infantry occupying Sub-sector B. An aggres- 


** Mason and Furr, op. cit., p. 123. 
* Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 251. 


SERVICE OF THE 372ND REGIMENT 22% 


sive régime of patrolling resulting in valuable information of the 
enemy marked the occupation of the sub-sector by the regiment until 
the armistice.” 

Just prior to embarkation the French command decorated the regi- 
mental colors and Colonel Tupes with the Croix de Guerre with palm. 

Colonel Tupes finally says with characteristic modesty that: “no 
historian should ever mention the services of the 372nd Infantry in 
the World War without naming its commanders in the 157th French 
Division: Colonel Augustine Quillet, who commanded the Infantry 
of the Division, and Major General Mariano Goybet, the Division 
Commander. The success of the regiment was due to them and they 
will always be remembered with honor and affectionate regard by 
those who served under them.” ?7 


** Notes furnished to the author, July 7, 1925. 


CHAPTER 32 
SERVICE OF THE 92ND DIVISION 


Taking Over of the St. Die Sector August 25—Transference to the Argonne 
September 21—Two Flights from the Front—Courtmartial of Leaders for 
Cowardice—Transference to the Marbache Sector October 5—Participation 
in the Final Allied Drive of November 10 and 11 


HE colored troops from the various cantonments were organized 

under the 92nd Army Division in command of Major General 
Charles C. Ballou. The staff and field officers, the officers of the 
supply units, Quartermaster Corps, Engineer Corps, and artillery 
units, with few exceptions, were white. The remainder of the com- 
missioned officers, comprising about four-fifths of the whole, were 
colored. 

In May, 1918, the division was ordered overseas and the first 
contingent reached Brest on June 19. Later in the same month the 
other units arrived. 

The infantry units of the division went into training at Bourbonne- 
les-Bains in Haute Marne for a period of eight weeks, while the 
artillery brigade and the ammunition train went into training on the 
artillery grounds at Montmourillon, in the department of Vienne. 

On August 25 the division took over its first sector at St. Die, 
the southeastern bend of the battle line stretching from the North 
Sea to Switzerland. Opposite the sector lay Alsace and behind it 
lay impenetrable mountains and forests. “The physical barriers,” says 
Scott, “made extensive military movements impracticable and for this 
reason the sector was comparatively a quiet one and usually assigned 
to inexperienced divisions coming into the front line for the first 
time.” * The division was supported by the French artillery, since 
the artillery brigade of the division was still in training at Mont- 
mourillon. 

The 6th Infantry of the American Expeditionary Force had been 
occupying a part of this sector, and, a few days before it was relieved 
by the 92nd Division, it had captured the village of Frapelle, and 


*The American Negro in the Great War, p. 136. 
222 


SERVICE OF THE 92ND DIVISION 223 


extended its front-line trenches. The Negro companies ordered for- 
ward to occupy these trenches received their first baptism of fire and 
gas on August 25. The Germans had taken the offensive on account 
of the loss of Frapelle. The chief activities along this sector con- 
sisted of patrolling and raiding parties. On the night of August 31, 
an attempt of the enemy to retake Frapelle was repulsed, and the day 
following an attack upon the Negro trenches at Ormont was beaten 
back. During an enemy raid near Frapelle, September 4, Will Clincy 
of Birmingham, Alabama, belonging to the 366th Infantry, was operat- 
ing with his teammate an automatic rifle when his partner was mortally 
stricken and he himself was very severely wounded. Nevertheless, 
Clincy continued to fire the rifle alone until the raid was driven back. 

On September 14 a Negro raiding party captured a group of five 
German soldiers, the first prisoners taken by the g2nd Division. In 
the meantime, the Germans captured two Negroes of a patrolling 
party and thus learned that the forces opposing them were American 
Negroes. 

On the same day, near Lesseau, Joe Williams of Acton, Alabama, 
belonging to the 366th Infantry, was wounded in resisting an attack 
by an enemy raiding party, which was advancing under heavy barrage 
and using liquid fire. The sergeant of the combat group to which 
Williams belonged was killed, and others of the group were wounded. 
Undismayed, however, Williams, with three others, fearlessly resisted 
the enemy until they were obliged to retreat. 

On September 21 General Pershing ordered the g2nd Division 
to the Argonne sector, preparatory to the Allied drive scheduled 
for September 26. At this time the Germans had made their last 
drive, July 15, and were not only on the defensive but were being 
driven back. On July 18 General Foch had launched his first counter- 
attack, directed toward reducing the Marne salient where the battle- 
line projected within sixty kilometers of Paris. This offensive had 
caused a general withdrawal of the Germans from the Marne. The 
breathing-spell which this victory had brought to the Allies enabled 
General Pershing to assemble his scattered units, which had been operat- 
ing under French and British commands, and to form a united army 
under his own direction. On September 12 he had, with the as- 
sistance of 70,000 French troops which had been placed under his 
command, launched an offensive and reduced the St. Mihiel salient. 
He was now preparing for the great Meuse-Argonne offensive which 
contemplated driving the enemy out of the Argonne and threatening 


224 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


his base at Sidan. The date of the offensive was set for September 
25, and the g2nd Division, which had been in the St. Die sector, was 
ordered to entrain for the Argonne region. This division arrived 
on the scene on the 23rd, and the 368th Infantry of the division 
was assigned to a sector opposite Binaville. 

The jump-off at dawn September 26 was met by heavy bombard- 
ment of shot and gas, and the whole front was a maze of wire en- 
tanglements and machine-gun nests. 

The colored troops of the g2nd Division engaged in this offensive 
lacked spirit and several times were thrown into a panic. Says General 
Bullard: “they had twice run away from in front of the enemy, causing 
the French, for their own safety, to request the relief of the Negro 
division from the fighting line. 

“Some thirty Negro officers were involved in this running away. 
Five—the clearest cases and supposed leaders of the movement— 
only five, had been selected for trial by the law officers of the 2nd 
Army. A court-martial composed of officers from another, a white 
division, had been ordered for this purpose. 

“Before this court one Negro officer had been tried, convicted 
and sentenced to death. It startled me, for much experience and ob- 
servation in such matters had taught me that where even the most 
exact justice is meted out to Negroes, if meted out by white men 
alone, it becomes to Negroes injustice and converts them in the eyes 
of their fellows into martyrs for the race. I, therefore, at once 
ordered the court to suspend trial upon the other cases and deter- 
mined personally to investigate the whole matter and see the state 
of mind of the Negroes of the g2nd Division before I should pro- 
ceed any further with the trials. It took about a week for me to 
complete this investigation. It developed a lack of feeling among 
the Negroes of the division, a general lack of concern in the whole 
matter. Many of them knew nothing and almost all of them cared 
nothing about it. Those who knew seemed to believe that the white 
court-martial would give justice, and especially a court-martial com- 
posed of officers of another division. The same investigation also 
developed that there were some fifty other Negro officers of the di- 
vision who were at that time being examined as to fitness to retain 
their commissions, all before boards of white officers. 

“I ordered all of these boards to suspend their work of examina- 
tion. But I had in the end to allow the court-martial, having once 


SERVICE OF THE 92ND DIVISION 225 


begun, to continue its trial of the four or five leading cases charged 
with cowardice. All five were found and sentenced as the first, 
exactly, I felt sure, as any white men would have been sentenced. 
Yet I knew that these Negroes could not be held as responsible as 
white men, and I deliberately set about finding any possible flaw that 
would excuse an upsetting of all of the proceedings. To this end I 
called to my assistance General E. A. Kreger, of the Judge Advocate’s 
Department, representing the War Department in the American Ex- 
peditionary Forces. He it was who should finally review these cases. 
He could at the time find no flaws in them, but later he or some other 
did find one flaw in one case. The last man tried testified in his 
own behalf that his own captain, who was killed in the runaway, had 
given him orders to run. There was no other living witness to this 
captain’s order; the captain himself was dead. So the case against 
the accused was completely disapproved and he was set free on the 
ground of uncontroverted evidence of having received an order to run. 

“I forwarded these five cases for final consideration to the Presi- 
dent with the recommendation that they all be let off from all punish- 
ment. I felt perfectly sure that it would so result, and so it did. In 
1919, a year later, the President ordered them all released. As I now 
member it, the other twenty-five officers and the rest of the battalion 
escaped everything, even reproof.” ” 

In spite of the balking of the colored troops, the other Allied 
forces pressed forward and in several days had cut their way en- 
tirely across no man’s land. At this juncture, several units of the 
92nd Division, to wit, the 366th and 365th Infantry and the 317th 
Engineers, were ordered to move forward and engage in the work of 
building roads and bridges through the densely wooded gorges and 
ravines of no man’s land. This work which was done “in the chill 
rain of dark nights’ was highly commended by General Pershing. 

On the night of September 27, Lieutenant Charles Young, of 
Austin, Texas, belonging to the 366th Infantry, was commanding a 
scout platoon when he was twice severely wounded from shell-fire. 
He refused medical aid, and remained in an exposed position helping 
to dress the wounds of his fellows during the entire night. For this 
soldierly act he later received a medal. 

By the 5th of October the enemy had been driven out of the 


? Quoted from General Bullard’s Personalities and Reminiscences of the War, 
Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925, by courtesy of the author and the publishers, 


226 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


southern half of the Argonne region, and on that date the g2nd Di- 
vision was transferred to the Marbache sector east of St. Mihiel, and 
directly south of Metz, extending along the Moselle river from Mar- 
bache to Pont-a-Mousson, a distance of sixteen kilometers. 

The higher officers of the division were much discouraged over 
the behavior of the Negro troops in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. 
Says General Bullard: “not one of the officers believed that the 92nd 
Division would ever be worth anything as soldiers. Every one of 
them would have given anything to have been transferred to any 
other duty. It was the most pitiful case of discouragement that I have 
ever seen among soldiers. 

“The Negro division (diary, November 1) seems in a fair way 
to be a failure. It is in a quiet sector, yet can hardly take care of 
itself, while to take any offensive action seems wholly beyond its 
powers. I have been here now with it three weeks and have been 
unable to have it make a single raid upon the enemy. They are really 
inferior soldiers. There is no denying it. Their Negro officers have 
an inadequate idea of what is expected of soldiers, and their white 
officers are too few to leaven the lump.’ 

““Spent the day (diary, November 5) going about the army and 
seeing. I saw especially the Negroes, the g2nd Division, which, 
after more than a month in the trenches cannot yet make a raid. It 
failed again on one to-day. Poor Negroes! They are hopelessly 
inferior. I’ve been talking with them individually about their di- 
vision’s success. That success is not troubling them. With every 
one feeling and saying that they are worthless as soldiers, they are 
going on quite unconcernedly. 

““The g2nd Negro Division is not making much, if any progress 
toward efficiency and I am afraid it never will be worth anything as 
a fighting unit. Its division commanding general is not very strong 
as a military man. I’m inclined to think he will have to be “S. O. S.ed” 
and I'll have to have this done.’ 

“From about the 25th of October then until a few days before 
the armistice I put forth every effort to have this division execute some 
offensive operation, as a raid, against the enemy. The division was 
large and composed of exceptionally husky, vigorous looking soldiers, 
well equipped. The enemy troops against them were of second or 
third class, not by any means the best. I provided the most skilled 
French and American advisers and instructors for them in an effort 
to have them execute a successful raid. I never succeeded even to a 


SERVICE OF THE 92ND DIVISION 227 





slight degree. As I remember, in those three weeks this division of 
some 27,000 men captured one German!” ® 

The activities along this front until November 10 consisted of 
patrolling and raiding parties in. which the Negro troops generally 
took a defensive and losing part. Nevertheless, in these raiding ex- 
peditions a number of individuals among the colored parties displayed 
soldierly courage and heroism. Robert Brickenridge of Hennessey, 
Oklahoma, belonging to the 365th Infantry, was severely wounded 
in action at Ferme de Bel Air, October 29, but, in spite of his wound, 
he continued to use his automatic rifle, crawling forward for a dis- 
tance of 100 yards to a position where he could obtain a better field 
of fire, and assisted in preventing an enemy party from taking a posi- 
tion on the company’s flank. Finally a bullet from an enemy machine 
gun killed him. 

The troops of the g2nd Division were occupying positions on both 
sides of the Moselle. The battle-line on the east bank began at a point 
much farther south than the line on the west bank, due to the fact 
that the St. Mihiel drive had pushed the line northward on the west 
bank without disturbing the line on the east bank. 

The mission assigned to the division was to push forward west 
of the Seille river, along the heights on both banks of the Moselle 
river in the direction of Corny. The objective was to capture and 
hold the Bois Frehaut and the Bois Voivrotte, thus advancing thé 
line to the northern boundaries of these woods. The division was 
to advance in conjunction with the French 32nd Army Corps and 
the French 7th Division on the left, and the French 165th Division 
on the right. 

The 183rd Brigade (i.e., the 350th Machine Gun Battalion, 365th 
and 366th Infantry Regiments) was to attack on the east of the 
Moselle, and the 367th Infantry of the 184th Brigade was to attack 
on the west of the Moselle. The colored troops on both sides of 
the Moselle were to maintain liaison with the French. 

“Two or three days before the armistice,’ says General Bullard, 
“T resolved to attack the enemy with my whole army. Before I 
could put my resolution into effect I received an order from Gen- 
eral Pershing to do just what I had decided to do. The order was 
given to the g2nd Division as to the rest of the 2nd Army. The 
division made no impression of consequence upon the enemy. ‘The 


® Quoted from General Bullard’s Personalities and Reminiscences of the War, 
Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925, by courtesy of the author and the publishers. 


228 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


poor 92nd Negroes’ (Diary, November 11) ‘wasted time and dawdled 
where they did attack and in some places where they should have 
attacked, never budged at all. It seemed to be as much the fault 
of the general as of the Negroes.’ ... ‘Two days ago’ (Diary, No- 
vember 12) ‘and again yesterday the 92nd Division would not fight, 
couldn’t be made to attack in any effective sense. The general who 
commands them can’t make them fight.’ 

“The general seemed to me to have lost sight of mrlitary efficiency 
in the racial ‘uplift’ problem which filled his mind.” * 

The g2nd Division contained the first artillery brigade of Negroes 
ever organized. This brigade arrived at the Marbache section October 
18, and there had its first experience in actual warfare. In the 
attack of November 10 it was operating on the east of the Moselle 
and was ordered to advance with standing and rolling barrage in 
the initial phase of the advance and to follow thereafter the advanc- 
ing infantry with all mobile elements, and to support further advances. 

The advance commenced at seven o'clock November Io, the troops 
on the east of the Moselle taking the initiative. By eleven o’clock 
all first objectives east of the Moselle were attained. By 11:15 the 
Bois Frehaut was penetrated. At 3:05 the 2nd Battalion, 366th In- 
fantry, was obliged to withdraw “to the southern edge of Bois Voivrotte 
because of heavy enemy shelling, high explosives and gas in the 
woods.”’®> By 7:30 the 2nd Battalion of the 365th Infantry had reached 
Bois Frehaut and the 1st Battalion was sent forward to support the 
attack. In the fighting at Bois Frehaut, Corporal Russell Pollard 
of Weatherford, Texas, belonging to the 365th Infantry: “conducted 
his squad skilfully in firing on hostile machine guns, until his rifle 
was broken. He then used his wire-cutters with speed and_ skill 
under heavy shell and machine-gun fire. Although wounded in his 
right arm, he continued to cut the wire with his left hand, and 
assisted his men in getting through it, until ordered to the dressing 
station a second time by his company commander.” Later he was 
awarded a medal for this heroic service. 

During the day the troops on the east of the Moselle advanced 
into the Bois Voivrotte and captured three prisoners. In the fighting: 
near the Bois Voivrotte on the 11th of November Private Tom 
Rivers, from Opelika, Alabama, who belonged to the 366th Infantry, 

“Quoted from General Bullard’s Personalities and Reminiscences of the War, 


Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925, by courtesy of the author and the publishers. 
* Report of Commander 183rd Brigade. 


SERVICE OF THE 92ND DIVISION 229 


distinguished himself by volunteering, after he had been gassed, to 
carry important messages through heavy barrages to the support com- 
panies, and refusing first aid until his company was relieved. For 
this courageous act he later received a hero’s medal. 

The next morning, November 11, at five o’clock the attack was 
renewed on the east side of the Moselle. The advancing troops were 
met by strong enemy artillery, machine-gun, and infantry fire. Ac- 
ording to General Barnum’s report, “Troops on the right had reached 
the outskirts of Brouxieres by 7:30 a. m. Troops on the left had 
advanced a short distance, but had been forced to retire to the woods.” 
The artillery was destroying the wire entanglements about Brouxiéres 
preparatory to farther advance when at 10:45 the order was re- 
ceived to cease firing on account of the signing of the armistice. 
During the two days’ fighting the troops on the east bank of the 
Moselle advanced a total of 314 kilometers. The attack was executed 
over a difficult terrain. The Bois Frehaut is a wood about 1,500 meters 
square, and the Bois Voivrotte to the east is a wood about 600 meters 
square. Both of these woods were a mass of heavy German wire. 
Their edges were protected by heavy bands of wire and chevaux-de- 
frise. 

The attack on the west of the Moselle was less aggressive, but 
was marked by alternate forward dashes and precipitous taking to the 
woods. 

At 9:30 the French on the left had not succeeded in capturing 
Preny, and the general advance was halted. At 10:30 an attack of 
the 367th Infantry, 184th Brigade, was repulsed and reinforcements 
had to be sent forward. Later in the day, in an attack on Pagny, 
the French 56th Infantry became hopelessly enmeshed in the enemy’s 
wire entanglements and were being slaughtered by the German ma- 
chine guns. Two machine-gun units from the 367th Infantry and 
350th Battalion respectively were sent to the rescue, and succeeded 
in silencing the German batteries and covering the withdrawal of 
the French infantry. The rescuing units held their position until 
relieved by reinforcements from the 56th. 

The 367th regiment on the west bank of the Moselle made prac- 
tically no advance. General Bullard seemed to think that it lacked 
the fighting spirit. However, it certainly had more difficult ground 
to cover. “In the area west of the Moselle,” says Major General 
Martin, “the ground in front of the position slopes to the north into 
a basin with little or no cover. On the west Preny heights rise 


230 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


precipitously out of the plain and the town and citadel dominate the 
entire basin up to Preny and beyond.” ® 

The achievements of the 92nd Division on this front consisted in 
a gain of 3% kilometers on the east bank of the Moselle. 

“A total of six prisoners was captured; three in the Bois Frehaut, 
and three in the Bois Voivrotte. 

“The following material was captured: 1,000 (approximately) 
grenades, all types; 5,000 (approximately) rounds ammunition; 25 
(approximately ) boxes M. G. ammunition, in belts; 50 (approximately ) 
rifles and bayonets; 10 (approximately) pairs field glasses; 4 (ap- 
proximately) machine guns; 6 carrier pigeons; I signal lamp and 
battery; 2 Verey pistols; 3 carbide lamps; 100 helmets. Many over- 
coats, boots, canteens, belts, and other articles of equipment were 
left by the fleeing enemy.” 

The following were the casualties : 


Killed Wounded Gassed Missing Total 


BOStiIT LM Tant evans sein Givin is lene 14 67 211 8 300 
ZOOUNTINTANULy te 5 nites a et et oer ee 17 52 63 O 132 
2coth Battaliontisis se ies see oF I e) II (0) 12 

32 11g 285 8 444 


General Pershing, in an address to the officers and soldiers of the 
g2nd Division, January, 1919, said: 

“IT want you officers and soldiers of the g2nd Division to know 
that the g2nd Division stands second to none in the record you have 
made since you arrived in France. I am proud of the part you have 
played in the great conflict which ended on the 11th of November, 
yet you have only done what the American people expected you to 
do and you have measured up to every expectation of the Commander- 
in-Chief. I realize that you did not get into the game as early as 
some of the other units, but since you took over your first sector 
you have acquitted yourselves with credit, and I believe that if the 
armistice had not become effective on the 11th day of November, 
the g2nd would have still further distinguished itself.” 


° Official Report, quoted by Scott, op. cit., p. 162. 


CHAPTER 33 
WORTH OF THE NEGRO TROOPS 


Summary of the Services of the Colored Units—Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 
—Citations for Distinguished Service—General Bullard’s Criticisms of the 
g2nd Division—General Estimate of The Negro As a Soldier—Enlivening 
Effect of Negro Regimental Bands in the Camps—Introduction of the 
French People to Jazz Music 


N regard to the value of the Negro troops in the World War it 

is pertinent to say in the first place that any nation at war will 
have an effective army in the degree that the fighting force is made 
up of harmonious elements. Any difference in racial elements or 
cultural background is sure to interfere with the efficiency of the 
army as a whole. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans only free- 
men were allowed to enlist for military service. The Carthaginian, 
Hannibal, though one of the world’s greatest generals, suffered de- 
feat chiefly because of the heterogeneous elements he was obliged to 
draft into his army; and William the Conqueror nearly lost the battle 
of Hastings because, at a critical moment, a division of Alpines, which 
he had drafted from Brittany, broke ranks and fled. 

No respectable military man would hesitate to say that our fight- 
ing force in the World War would have worked more smoothly and 
effectively if it had been all white. 

The race problem can no more be eliminated from military affairs 
than from civil affairs. From the drafting to the mustering out, the 
presence of the Negro in our army was a source of manifold and 
perpetual discord, dissipating the time and energies of the War De- 
partment and the commanding generals in efforts to preserve discipline 
among the soldiers. 

The white demagogues and fanatics are as busy and full of mischief 
in an army as out of it. They preach the doctrine that there should 
be no race prejudice, and they harp upon any military or social 
privilege enjoyed by a white soldier that is not equally enjoyed by 
the Negro. They expect white men to serve willingly under Negro 
officers, sleep and eat with them in the same barracks and dance with 

231 


232 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


the same ladies at the Moulin Rouge. Such social intermingling of 
the races does not exist in any of the American states, and cannot 
be made to exist in an American army. 

Race prejudice is a hard fact, and military commanders, of what- 
ever attitude towards the Negro problem, have to deal with the fact, 
which they find it difficult to harmonize with military efficiency. The 
372nd Negro regiment was so wrought up over the question of social 
equality that it was next to useless as a fighting unit until the crisis 
of the war was passed and the regimental officers were reorganized. 

The French soldiers and civilians were of necessity very hospitable 
to all foreign Allied troops fighting on their soil, and were even 
very tolerant of behavior on the part of foreign troops which would 
call for police interference among their own citizens. A certain class 
of our Negro soldiers mistook this hospitability for license, and pre- 
sumed that the French people, unlike the white Americans, had no 
racial prejudices. They found a welcome among a certain class of 
French women, but when they began to assume attitudes of familiarity 
with women of another type, they met with resentment and in some 
instances, overcame this by committing rape. In reference to this mat- 
ter General Bullard says: 

“It is commonly believed among Americans that French people 
have no objections to Negroes, but this I quickly found was an error. 
. . . While there were very few French people in the region occupied 
by this division, they were not happy to have the Negroes among 
them. The Negro is a more sensual man than the white man, and 
at the same time he is far more offensive to white women than a 
white man is. The little acts of familiarity that would pass unnoticed 
in a white man, become with white women the cause of complaint 
against the Negro. This special Negro division was already charged 
with fifteen cases of rape. 

‘For these reasons immediately after the armistice I recommended 
in effect that this division be sent home first of all American troops, 
that they be sent home in all honor, but above all, that they be sent 
quick. The answer came that Marshal Foch would not, pending 
peace, approve the transfer of any division back to the United States. 
In answer I told the American headquarters to say to Marshal Foch 
that no man could be responsible for the acts of these Negroes 
toward French women, and that he had better send this division home 
at once. This brought the order, and the 92nd was, I believe, the 
very first division to be sent home. I was told that the division 


WORTH OF THE NEGRO TROOPS 233 


was received at home with great glorification. I was perfectly will- 
ing that it should be; the American Army abroad was relieved. My 
own sense of relief can be understood when I say that while a part 
of the division was waiting for its railroad trains to move it to its 
port of embarkation, among other things, one French women com- 
plained that she was ravished by five g2nd Division soldiers.” ? 

A Negro of the 371st Regiment was convicted of attempted rape 
upon a French girl and sentenced to prison for twenty years. (From 
data furnished by Col. Chas. E. Greenough, letter of June 19, 1926.) 

These crimes, of course, reflect great discredit on the Negro soldiers, 
but the fault is not so much with them as with the white demagogues 
and fanatics in the army who led the Negro to believe that race preju- 
dice is a matter of Southern inculcation, and that white and colored men 
and white and colored women ought to commingle freely without ref- 
erence to a mere matter of pigmentation of the skin. 

We, of course, ought not to overlook the fact that only a small 
fraction of the Negro troops were involved in these crimes. The 
majority of the men of the g2nd, as of the other divisions, behaved 
remarkably well. 

Now, as to the fighting efficiency of the Negro troops, prior to 
the World War the Negro had entered only two branches and four 
organizations of the United States Army, to wit: the 9th and roth 
Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry, whereas during the World 
War the Negro figured to some extent in every branch of the service, 
including field artillery, coast artillery, engineer corps, signal corps, 
hospital and ambulance corps, veterinary corps, labor battalions, auto 
repairers, etc. The one service which the Negro did not enter was 
that of the aviation corps. 

The 92nd Division, made up entirely of Negroes except for the 
officers of higher command, has come in for the greatest amount of 
criticism on account of its weakness in aggressive warfare, its small 
achievements, and its general inefficiency. General Bullard, having 
successfully commanded a small unit of colored troops in the Spanish- 
American War, doubted the wisdom of utilizing a large mass of 
Negroes in a single division. Perhaps the Negro’s nervousness and 
susceptibility to stampede is heightened by the contagion of mass- 
suggestion. 

The general inefficiency of the Negro division was undoubtedly 


*Quoted from General Bullard’s Personalities and Reminiscences of the War, 
Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925, by courtesy of the author and the publishers. 


234 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


due in the main to its large complement of Negro colonels, captains, 
and lieutenants, who lacked the elements of leadership and who could 
not command the respect and confidence of the privates. 

The official personnel of a fighting unit is of the first importance 
for military efficiency, and, unfortunately for the Negro, in his present 
level of culture, not many men of his color can be found who are 
qualified for positions of command. The selection of a man for mili- 
tary command is not a matter of a few weeks’ training in an officers’ 
training camp, but a matter of discovering men who, in themselves 
and in their ancestry, represent a high order of intellectual and moral 
stamina. The Negro race in «increasing numbers may be expected 
to develop men of this type, but as yet they are rare, and difficult 
to discover. The graduation of any number of Negroes from an 
officers’ training camp would necessarily result in a large percent 
of them proving to be totally unfit for positions of command. When 
the General Staff of the American Expeditionary Force discovered 
the large percent of incompetent Negro officers, and set to work to 
weed them out, there was a great outcry of race prejudice among the 
Negro officers and privates, leading in some cases to acts of insubordina- 
tion. 

The personnel of the enlisted men of the 371st Negro regiment, 
brigaded with the French, was made up of Negroes of the cotton- 
fields and was in no sense superior in personnel to the men of the 
g2nd Division. The brilliant record of the 37Ist was due to the 
superior type of men in command. Not only were all the officers 
white and graduates of West Point, which institution serves to select 
men of very superior intelligence and moral fiber, but “by a special 
request made at Washington the regiment was granted a twenty-five 
percent excess of officers over the number allowed in the normal regi- 
ment.” ? 

If a division had been made up of white men recruited only from 
the lowest white stratum of society, and largely officered by men 
who, neither themselves nor their ancestors, had ever held positions 
of command, would any sane military man have expected it to make 
a scintillating dash in battle? The British and French generals wisely, 
scattered their colored units among their other troops, and it was 
politics and not military sense which prompted the idea of a great 
mass of Negroes in a single division of the American army. As a 
result of this folly the American army suffered serious handicaps, 

* Quoted from a letter from Colonel Miles to the author, July 21, 1925. 


WORTH OF THE NEGRO TROOPS 235 


and the Negroes comprising the 92nd Division received a stigma for 
which they were not in any large sense to blame. 

The 372nd regiment, which throughout was brigaded under French 
commands, was in some respects a failure, due apparently to its hav- 
ing a large quota of incompetent Negro officers, and to the perpetual 
wrangles and jangles between the white and colored officers and _ be- 
tween the officers and the men. When, in obedience to the general 
decision to have either all white or all Negro subordinate officers in 
Negro regiments, the Negro officers of the 372nd were discharged 
or sent to the g2nd Division, the efficiency of the 372nd was greatly 
improved, but, in the meantime, much valuable time and energy were 
wasted. 

Colonel V. A. Caldwell, commander of the 365th regiment, g2nd 
Division, says in a letter to the author of this book, September 12, 
1925: “I have had considerable service with colored troops in Cuba, 
and in the Philippine Islands, and have had considerable experience 
in training them. In the g2nd Division, the trouble, in my opinion, 
was in shifting officers. Colored troops will do well under officers 
they know and believe in. They are not difficult to train, but they 
must have officers to train them who know how to get the training 
over. In my service with the 365th in the trenches they did as well as 
could be expected, keeping in mind the way the regiment had been 
recruited and the training chances it had. I don’t think the color of 
the officers has much to do with it, but I do believe that almost any 
colored outfit can be ruined if you keep switching its officers. It is 
my belief that colored troops have a much stronger personal attitude 
towards their officers than white troops.” 

With the exception of the g2nd Division and the 372nd regiment, 
all of the Negro units in France acquitted themselves with credit and 
were a real addition to the fighting strength of the American forces. 
Each unit and also the individuals comprising the units, displayed 
soldierly qualities and won distinctions for valuable service and acts 
of heroism. In the Civil War, and in the Spanish American War, 
as well as in the World War, Negro troops have demonstrated their 
ability to make good soldiers. 

However, in many particulars the Negro is a different kind of 
soldier from the Caucasian of the Anglo-American type. The Negro 
has his peculiar psychological traits which differentiate him from other 
races, and these traits come out in his military as in his civil life. 
Without understanding him, it is impossible to make a good soldier 


236 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
of him, no matter whether he be commanded by white or black offi- 
cers. The Negro is not as pugnacious as the Anglo-American, and 
is more susceptible to panic. He will fight as courageously and reck- 
lessly as the most pugnacious white man, however, if nothing unusual 
or startling touches off his hair-trigger nerves. He has many traits 
which are childish and one of them, not unfavorable to military 
efficiency, is absolute faith and confidence in leaders of masterful per- 
sonality. The character of Negro troops, more than the character 
of troops of any other race, depends upon superior leadership. 

The 369th, 370th, 371st and 372nd regiments were more fortunate 
in arriving in France in time-to have some part in resisting the last 
of the great German drives, but the 92nd Division, which comprised 
most of the colored troops, did not get into the fighting until the 
German drives had been stopped, and the tide of battle had been turned 
in favor of the Allies. In this respect the g2nd Division shared the 
misfortune of other divisions of the American army. 

The commanders of the French and American armies were very 
generous in their citations of divisions, units of divisions, and in- 
dividuals for heroic and distinguished service, and the colored units 
and individuals came in for their full share of these citations. 

In the 92nd Division, one batallion, fourteen individual officers and 
forty-three privates were cited for bravery. 

Of the four regiments which served under French commands, the 
369th, as a whole, received the French Croix de Guerre, and 174 in- 
dividuals were cited for bravery. In the 370th regiment, ninety 
individuals received crosses or medals for distinguished service. 

The 371st Regiment as a whole received the Army citation for dis- 
tinguished service, and 146 individuals of the regiment were cited 
for bravery. 

The 372nd regiment received the French Croix de Guerre and a 
number of individual members were cited for bravery. 

Among the colored, as also among the white, American soldiers, 
the most common citation was for carrying messages and rescuing 
the wounded under severe shell-fire. Some typical cases of extraordi- 
nary heroism among the colored soldiers have been mentioned in re- 
lating the exploits of the several units. . 

Colonel James A. Moss of Louisiana, who commanded the 367th 
Infantry, speaking in general of the efficiency of the Negro soldier, 
says : 

“Make the colored man feel that you have faith in him, and then, 


WORTH OF THE NEGRO TROOPS 237 


by sympathetic and conscientious training and instruction, help him 
to fit himself in a military way to vindicate that faith, to make good. 
Be strict with him, but treat him fairly and justly, making him 
realize that in your dealings with him he will always be given a square 
deal. Commend him when he does well and punish him when he is 
refractory—that is to say, let him know that he will always get what 
is coming to him, whether it be reward or whether it be punish- 
ment. In other words, treat and handle the colored man as you would 
any other human being out of whom you would make a good soldier, 
out of whom you would get the best there is in him, and you will 
have as good a soldier as history has ever known—a man who will 
drill well, shoot well, march well, obey well, fight well—in short, a 
man who will give a good account of himself in battle, and who will 
conduct and behave himself properly in camp, in garrison and in 
other places.” § 

Major Greenough, commander of the 371st Regiment, says in a letter 
to the author, June 19, 1926: 

“The Negro mind in battle does not think clearly as a rule—but then 
how many minds do in that awful bedlam? However, he makes up for 
this by his blind obedience. He will go anywhere you lead him. I 
remember one soldier telling me that, when we came to that little river 
I have mentioned previously, he felt he could not attempt to ford it— 
whipped as it was by a murderous machine-gun fire. He added, though, 
that when he saw me go in, his confidence returned, and he followed me, 
for he felt that wherever I went he could go also.” 

Captain W. R. Richey, of Laurens, South Carolina, speaks in 
high praise of the 37Ist regiment. 

The following description and estimate of the Negro soldier is from 
the pen of John Richards, a Northern-born man, who commanded a 
Negro unit in the World War: 

“The colored soldiers are good ‘hikers.’ They endure the fatigue 
of long marches with remarkable pluck and cheerfulness. A white 
colonel of a Negro regiment tells how his men would brace up and 
march as if on dress-parade whenever they passed through a small 
French village. ‘The command of “attention” is not necessary. Every 
man swings into step, shoulders are thrown back, and extra distance 
between ranks closed automatically. Some one is watching them. 
There was one comedian who stowed somewhere about him for these 
occasions a battered silk hat. We let him wear it—in small towns. 

*Quoted by Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 185. 


238 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


The inhabitants stared at him and laughed. He was happy and made 
the whole company happy.’ . . . 

“My dismay was great when I found myself transferred to a 
famous colored regiment, then in a sector in the Champagne region. I 
had known little or nothing of negroes. Smiling, dark-skinned por- 
ters had brushed my clothes on Pullman cars and pocketed my quar- 
ters; on great evenings I had dined at the Parker House in Boston; 
and once, when I was a boy, I heard Booker Washington speak. 
But such experiences do not make for large knowledge of the colored 
man. I had the typical Northern feeling that only a Southerner could 
work with him. Thinking over my friends from the North whom I 
have seen leading and understanding their brother of another race, I 
am convinced that this idea of the mysterious bond between the South- 
erner and the Negro is too much dwelt on. Tor my part, looking 
back at my own small corner of the war, I am very glad to have had 
the experience of going over the top, first with white, then with colored 
American troops... . 

“Colored men are wonderfully good company. Their ridiculous 
chaff, their comical bewilderment and excuses when they have counted 
the ammunition wrong or left a rifle to be rained on, are very endearing. 

“Doan yo’ heah what de man say, yo’ lazy dood?’ In speaking 
of an officer among themselves, our men seldom said lieutenant or 
major; it was generally ‘de man.’ And generally the men were ‘de 
doods.’ Sometimes, from a corporal in a fit of irritation, one would 
hear, ‘Yo’ big black nigga’; but let an officer use that word, said 
the captain, and good-bye to his influence! The thing he needed 
most was a transfer to another regiment. I have never tried it, 
nor have I heard it tried. Good workers, cheerful humorists, heart- 
warming children are these soldiers. But beware the time in the cold 
gray of morning when the big shells come, and every eye must be 
clear and nerves steeled for the expected raid. Make sure that you 
move and talk like a paladin who minds eighty-eights no more than 
flies, whatever your feelings may be. And if you are visiting an out- 
post at night, know the countersign, and curse, and ring the bell whose 
handle hangs by the chicken-wire—hard. Even then, be ready to drop 
flat at any moment, for their nerves are on hair-triggers, and they love 
to throw grenades. . 

“Again, when we were well into No-Man’s-Land, and our familiar 
trenches seemed far away, I remember two boys rolling on the ground 


WORTH OF THE NEGRO TROOPS 239 


crying, ‘I’se got dat gas bad!’ when no gas was there, and other boys 
laughing at them. When we took prisoners, boys again! Nobody 
wished to take their sullen captives away somewhere and cut their 
hearts out—they were much too happy. The proud soldiers escort- 
ing the detachment to the rear were as good as a brass band. Their 
march among the shell-holes was nearly a cakewalk. 

“How willingly they followed their officers among the shattered 
wire and the ruin of the German trenches, shouldering the heavy 
guns or carrying the still more cumbersome ammunition! When I 
was wounded, how tenderly and deftly a big corporal bandaged my 
mead 1. 1)" 

“There are other random observations that may throw light on 
these men. The best of them are very efficient at liaison work, than 
which there is nothing more important. The messenger must often 
not only run through hell with his message, but get through. Be- 
sides courage and endurance, they had a marvelous knack of finding 
their way in the infernal tangle of an old trench system which had 
changed hands several times. Our best man was one who in ‘civil life’ 
had been a distinguished ‘gun-man.’.. . 

“Sickness has a very depressing effect on the negro: a boy who 
suffers with rheumatism is sure that it is going to his heart; a cold 
brings thoughts of an early grave, though theytare really very rugged. 
We had expected much sickness with the cold weather, yet found, for 
the most part, nothing worse than imaginings and low spirits. They 
dropped away fast in the hospital when we were waiting at Brest 
to go home; but so did their white officers... . 

“The colored soldier is generally a splendid physical specimen, with 
great powers of endurance. He is tireless, cheerful, and loyal, and 
will follow like a dog through artillery barrage and the wind of 
machine-gun bullets. On the other hand, he has an extraordinary 
nervousness, does not like the dark, and lacks will and initiative. This 
last appears most clearly in the case of non-commissioned officers. 
Many will handle their men very creditably behind the lines, while 
to an officer some of them are full of intelligent suggestions (too full, 
if encouraged!). In hard conditions, however, the best of them, 
though showing no apparent fear, seem to be struck dumb. They 
do what they are told, but move as if bewildered. I think they lack 
the free, independent spirit that stirs in the breast of the white; 
that rises within him when the shells are falling thick and says, ‘I 


240 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





am a better man than any Boche, and I am coming through.’ 
Of course, you find the same spirit in some negroes, but it is rare. 
They are boys. They do not grow up, even under shell-fire. 

“Tf I were to join the army again, I should like to serve with 
colored troops. They are so cheerful and willing, and they march so 
well. They enjoy the theatrical effect of their drill... . 

“What a simple lovable people are these dark-skinned brothers of 
ours ! 

“Tf I were to go fighting again, I should like to serve with them, 
too; but it must be realized that this is a very different proposition. 
I should like to have the power to raise a body of negro troops. 
They should be picked men, and then picked again. To get non-com- 
missioned officers for a company, those of a battalion would be 
combed over, and these sergeants and corporals, when chosen, would 
be under close observation. In fighting qualities the average of the 
colored race is not as high as that of the whites; but given the picked 
men and their thrice-picked leaders, with officers who understand 
their weakness and strength, the result would be a body of troops that 
would shed great glory on their race... . 

“Men of the South who face the race question bitterly, and men 
of the North who wash your hands of.it, remember that races de- 
velop slowly! A few years ago, these men were slaves in cotton- 
fields. A few years before that they were children in the jungles 
of Africa. They are children still. The race-question is a topic far 
beyond the scope of this paper; yet, in considering it, let the white 
citizen remember the lovely traits of his colored brother. We have 
so much in power, prestige, and development which they have not. 
We inherit an independent spark, fostered through ages of war and 
upward groping. Let us hold out our hands and open our hearts 
to these wonderful boys who move among us, remembering that white 
and black lie side by side in the fields ‘over there.’ ” * 

An account of the American Negro in the World War would not 
be complete without some mention of the part played by the Negro 
jazz bands in enlivening the camps behind the lines, and in infusing a 
cheerful spirit and rhythmic impulse into all of the men who had to 
“go over the top.” 

If the Germans were unable to conquer France with their lead, 
steel, and gas, the American Negro bands certainly conquered it easily 


*John Richards, “Some Experiences with Colored Soldiers,” Atlantic Monthly, 
Aug., 1919. 


WORTH OF THE NEGRO TROOPS 241 


with their jazz music. This music seemed to gather up in no man’s 
land all of the echoes of exploded shell and shrapnel and of 
the shouts of triumph and of the wails of the dying, and to send 
them wheezing and honking through the instruments of the brass 
band. 

France was literally bombarded with “jazz.” High officials of the 
French Army stole away to Negro camps and sat enraptured before 
the “jazzers.” The Negro regimental bands, especially that of the 
369th, “jazzed” their way through France, and in all of the villages 
behind the lines the French folk began to pat their feet and catch 
the jazz spasm. 

Noble Sissle, a drum-major of the 369th, says that in northern 
France: ‘We were playing our Colonel’s favorite ragtime, “The Army 
Blues,’ in a little village where we were the first American troops 
there, and among the crowd listening to that band was an old lady 
about sixty years of age. To everybody’s surprise, all of a sudden, 
she started doing a dance that resembled “Walking the Dog.’ Then I 
was cured, and satisfied that American music would some day be the 
world’s music.” ® 

Emmett J. Scott, in his chapter on “Negro Music that Stirred 
France,’’ says: 

“No labor is ever so onerous that it can bar music from the 
soul of black folk. This race sings at work, at play and in every 
mood. Visitors to any army camp found the Negro doing musical 
‘stunts’ of some kind from reveille to taps—every hour, every minute 
of the day. All the time the trumpeters were not blowing out actual 
routine bugle calls, they were somewhere practising them. Mouth- 
organs were going, concertinas were being drawn back and _ forth, 
and guitars, banjos, mandolins and whatnot were in use—playing all 
varieties of music, from the classic, like ‘Lucia,’ “Poet and Peasant,’ 
and ‘Il Trovatore’ to the folk-songs and the rollicking ‘jazz.’ Music 
is indeed the chiefest outlet of the Negro’s emotions, and the state 
of his soul can best be determined by the type of melody he pours 
forth. 

“Some writer has said that a handful of pipers at the head of a 
Scotch regiment could lead that regiment down the mouth of a cannon. 
It is not doubted that a Negro regiment could be made to duplicate 
the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ at Balakava—‘into the mouth of hell,’ 
as Tennyson puts it, if one of their regimental bands should play— 

*Quoted by Scott, op. cit., p. 308. 


242 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


as none but a colored band can play, the vivacious strains of “There'll 
Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.’ 

“The Negro’s love of home is an integral part of his nature, and 
is exemplified in the themes he plaintively crooned in camp on both 
sides of the ocean. Such melodies as ‘Carry Me Back to Old Vir- 
ginia,’ ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ‘In de Evening by de Moonlight,’ 
and ‘Suwanee River’ recalled memories of the ‘old folks at home,’ and 
kept his patriotism alive, for he hoped to return to them some day 
and swell their hearts with pride by reason of the glorious record he 
made at the front. The Negro is essentially religious, and his deep 
spiritual temperament is vividly illustrated by the joy he finds in 
‘harmonizing’ such ballads of ancient days as ‘Swing Low, Sweet 
Chariot,’ ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ ‘Standin’ in the Need of Prayer,’ 
‘Every Time I Feel the Spirit,’ ‘I Wan’ to Be Ready,’ and ‘Roll, Jordan, 
Roll” The Negro is also an optimist, whether he styles himself by 
that high-sounding title or not, and the sincerity of his ‘make the best 
of it’ disposition is noted in the fervor he puts into those uplifting 
gems, ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, 
Smile,’ ‘There’s a Long, Long Trail,’ ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’ 
and ‘Good-bye Broadway, Hello France.’”’ ® 


* Scott, of. cit., pp. 301-2. 





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CHAPTER 34 
MIGRATION PREVIOUS TO 10914 


Movement of the Negro During the Days of Slavery—Escape of Runaways to 
Free Soil—Attraction of Free Negroes to the West and to the Industrial 
Centers in the South—Trend of Negro Migration after the Civil War— 
Exodus to the West in 1879—Movement from the Farms to the Towns— 
Concurrent Migration of Negroes and Whites to the North and West 


HE migration of the Negroes on their own initiative began dur- 

ing the days of slavery. It first took the form of flight by 
runaways, who generally fled in the direction of the free states, most 
of the fugitives going into Ohio. It is estimated that about 40,000 
slaves escaped to Ohio from 1830 to 1860. By way of the “under- 
ground railroad” about 15,000 fugitives during the same period passed 
through the free states and pressed on to Canada, settling in towns 
of southern Ontario. 

In addition to the runaway slaves, the free Negroes in the South 
moved about on their own initiative, and were actuated by the same 
motives as the migrating white people. Many of them were attracted 
by the gold craze to California in the fifties. The free Negro popula- 
tion of that State increased from 962 in 1850 to 4,086 in 1860. 
Other free Negroes followed the movement of white people toward 
the more rapidly developing states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi- 
gan, and Missouri. 

The movement of the free Negroes within the South was generally 
towards the more notably industrial states, where the development 
of large towns offered better employment in the handicrafts. For 
instance, there was a movement of the free Negroes of Florida into 
the towns of I ouisiana, and from Mississippi and Arkansas into the 
towns of Missouri and Kansas. 

The movement of free Negroes, however, was never considerable 
in any Southern state. A large proportion of free Negroes owned 
land or houses and were disinclined to migrate. For illustration, in 
all the Southern states, except Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and 
Texas, the population of free Negroes was greater in 1860 than in 

245 


240 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


1850; and in the four states with fewer free Negroes in 1860 the total 
diminution was only 663. 

The movement of free Negroes to Liberia, between 1820 and 1852, 
through the efforts of the American Colonization Society, numbered 
7,930. 

After the emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies 
in the thirties, there was an acute shortage of labor, and the attention 
of the free Negroes in the United States was directed to that region 
as especially inviting to Negro immigrants. The planters of these 
islands sent agents to the United States in search of Negro labor. In 
1834, one of these from Trinidad induced 200 Negroes from New 
York to accompany him to that island. Later about twenty free 
Negroes went there from Maryland, and 160 went from Penn- 
sylvania.* 

Agents from Jamaica and other islands visited this country in the 
interest of Negro immigration, but met with very little success. 
Other islands of the West Indies also were supposed to offer good 
opportunities for Negroes of the United States. In 1836, Z. Kingsley, 
a white planter of Florida, purchased 35,000 acres of land, near Port 
Plate, in northeastern Haiti, and established a plantation there under 
the direction of his mulatto son, George. In order to supply the 
labor for the plantation, Kingsley sent over six Negro men whom 
he emancipated. A year later he visited the plantation and brought 
with him his mulatto son’s wife and children, and the wives and chil- 
dren of the six Negro servants, and also ten additional families of 
slaves, liberated for the purpose of transportation to Haiti.2 The 
Negroes on this plantation were enjoying good health and prosperity, 
according to the last accounts, but no additional immigrants had 
arrived, 

In 1853 the free Negroes in the North launched an emigration 
movement toward the Niger Valley in Africa. They sent an agent 
to negotiate with African kings for territory, and in 1861 a shipload 
of 2,000 emigrants set sail for Africa.* Owing to lack of capital, 
unhealthy climate and other causes, two-thirds of the emigrants re- 
turned to the United States. 

During the Civil War there was a large and confusing movement 
of Negroes within the lines of the Federal troops, but it was deter- 

*Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, p. 78. 

2 Tht ips 77! 

*Cromwell, The Negro in American History, p. 43. 


MIGRATION PREVIOUS TO 1014 247 


mined by forces which the Negro did not control, and therefore, does 
not throw any light on the Negro’s migratory tendency. 

In 1879 there was a great exodus of Negroes from the South to 
the West, chiefly from the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, to 
Kansas. Within a period of two years about 60,000 Negroes left the 
Lower South for Kansas and other points in the West. This im- 
migration was not encouraged nor even welcomed by the people of 
the West. In fact, Kansas sent agents into the South to warn the 
Negroes against coming. When, however, the Negroes arrived in 
Kansas the white people there were disposed to protect them and lend 
them a helping hand. The hospitality of the people of that state was 
greatly overtaxed by the hordes of incoming Negroes. Unable to find 
employment, and being without resources, the immigrants suffered 
greatly from cold and hunger, and had to be relieved by public charity. 
In one year the people of Kansas donated for the relief of the sufferers 
$40,000, and about 500,000 pounds of clothing and bedding. England 
sent $8,000 and 50,000 pounds of goods.* 

A measure of permanent relief was effected by inducing a por- 
tion of the immigrants to settle on land. Local charities offered tools, 
teams, and supplies to Negroes who took up land. About 30,000 
Negroes settled on land as proprietors, tenants, and laborers. 

The causes of this migration were partly economic and partly 
political, The low price of cotton and partial failure of the crop had 
brought disaster to both Negroes and whites in the Lower South. At 
the same time, the propaganda of emigration leaders created a general 
belief among the colored people that the West offered them golden 
opportunities. 

The political conditions in the Lower South were discouraging 
from the standpoint of the Negro. The Reconstruction régime had 
just been overthrown by means of the Ku Klux and other forms of 
intimidation, and the Negroes had not only lost control of the states, 
but were kept away from the polls and subjected to a severity of 
repression and roughness of treatment which aroused widespread re- 
sentment. 

The migration of the Negroes from 1879 to the World War fol- 
lowed the general trend of the migration of both Negroes and whites 
during that period. There has been a steady movement of both races 
from the rural districts to the towns and cities. From 1860 to 1870, 


* Woodson, of. cit., p. 141. 
* Ibid., p. 142. 


248 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
the increase in number of Negroes in Southern cities was greater than 
that of the whites, due to the uprooting of the rural Negro as a result 
of the war,® but, since the latter date, the white people have moved 
more rapidly towards the towns and cities than the Negroes. From 
1900 to 1910 the white increase in Southern cities was 7.7 percent 
more than that of the Negro.” In this trend toward the cities both 
races have been influenced by the same cause, namely, the more rapid 
growth of industry as compared to agriculture. Low prices of farm 
products, and the constantly deteriorating soils, have deterred the more 
enterprising men from the pursuits of agriculture, while the cities, by 
reason of their rapidly developing trades and manufactures, have offered 
tempting opportunities to the wage-earner and the capitalist. The in- 
crease of manufactured products in sixteen Southern cities from 1880 
to 1905 was 143.3 percent. 

Along with this migration of white people toward the Southern 
cities, there has been a concurrent migration of white people from 
the Southern states to the Northern and Western states, where the 
greater industrial development has offered not only higher nominal 
wages, but a greater diversity of occupations. From the Civil War 
to the World War the white South lost an immense asset in the migra- 
tion of her aspiring young men to other sections of the country. 

Concurrent with the white migration to the North and West there 
has been for the same reasons a migration of Negroes, but of a less 
proportionate extent. The Negro migrants to the North and West 
prior to the World War were mostly of the servant class from South- 
ern towns, and were enticed away by the prospect of higher wages. 

“In the economic movement to the Northern cities,’ says Haynes, 
“the activity of employment agencies (especially for female domestic 
help) with drummers and agents in Southern communities, has served 
to spread tales of high wages, and to provide transportation for large 
numbers. Again, many who have been to the urban centers return 
for visits to their more rural home communities with show of better 
wages in dress, in cash, and in conversation. 

“The conclusion of the matter, therefore, is that the Negro is re- 
sponding to the call of commerce and industry, and is coming to the 
urban centers under economic influences similar to those that move 
his fellows.” § 


*Haynes, The Negro at Work in New York City, p. 15. 
"Tbid., p. 16. 


*Thid., p. 20. 


CHAPTER 35 
RECENT MIGRATION 


Extent of Migration North and South—Northern-born Negroes More Migrant 
than Southern-born—Southern Negro Migration between States—Excess of 
Volume of White Migration over That of Negro Migration—Causes Which 
Have Influenced the Migrants—Advantages and Disadvantages of the Migra- 
tion to Both Races—Gain of the South in Both Negro and White Population 


HE flow of Negro migration Northward and Westward, which 

has been in process since 1865, received a new impetus at the 
beginning of the World War. The migrating Negroes from various 
points in the South poured in such large streams into Chicago, New 
York, Pittsburgh, Gary, and other great cities as to attract national 
attention, and to arouse much discussion. 

The columns of the leading newspapers of the North and West 
contained lengthy stories, with great headlines, telling of the arrival 
of the black hordes. Sometimes the stories took the form of inter- 
views with the immigrants, eliciting the various reasons which had 
induced them to leave the South. Editorial comments followed the 
reporter's stories, informing the public of the conditions down South 
which the Negroes were finding intolerable. The Negro press, which 
always finds good campaign material in Southern outrages, took up 
this question of migration, and for months gave itemized accounts 
of the political injustices, the lynchings, persecutions, “jim-crowism,” 
and other abuses which lay at the bottom of the Negro exodus. Up 
to 1917 the number of Negro migrants to the North was variously 
estimated at from 150,000 to 750,000.1_ Later estimates ran the figures 
much higher. The South was represented as being in despair over 
the great loss of her Negro population, and not a few editors were 
rejoicing that at last the South was being duly punished for her sins 
of omission and commission against her ex-slaves. All of the lead- 
ing magazines of the country took the matter seriously, and, by 
special articles and editorial comments, discussed the probable effect 
upon the South, and also upon the North, of so great a change in the 

*Donald, “Negro Migration, 1916-18,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 6, p. 4. 

249 


250 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


distribution of the Negro population. The question was debated in 
Congress, and a special investigation of it was made by the United 
States Department of Labor. 

Finally several books were written on the subject, among them 
Negro Migration During the War, by Emmett J. Scott, and A Century 
of Negro Migration, by Carter G. Woodson. All of the publications 
dealing with the Negro migration lacked one essential element to an 
understanding of the subject. That is, they contained no statistics 
showing the extent of the migration. The underlying facts of the 
matter had to await the Census Reports of 1920. 

Now that those reports are-at hand, what are the facts? In the 
first place, the South sustained no loss in Negro population between 
I9I0 and 1920, but, on the contrary, gained 162,632. Six Southern 
states lost in Negro population, to wit, Delaware, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, but these losses were more than 
overcome by the gains in the other Southern states. 

In the next place, the migration of Southern Negroes to the North 
and West, though greater in volume than in previous decades, was 
not nearly so great as had been generally surmised. In spite of the 
migration of 1910-20, the number of Negroes living outside of the 
states of their birth was little greater in 1920 than it had been in 
previous decades. The percentage of Negroes living outside of the 
states of their birth was 16.6 percent in 1910, and I9.9 percent in 
1920. The 1920 census shows that the difference between the propor- 
tion of Southern-born Negroes living in the North and the proportion 
of Northern and Western-born Negroes living in the South was only 
Tey Dercenye 

In 1910 the number of Negroes born in the South and living in the 
North and West was 440,534, as compared to 780,794 in 1920. Thus 
the total migration of Negroes from the South during the decade 1910- 
20 was only 340,260; and, as an offset to this, during the same period 
5,734 Negroes from the North and West migrated into the South. The 
Negro migration out of the South, therefore, exceeded the Negro mi- 
gration into the South only to the extent of 334,526.? 

7It is possible that the actual number of southward migrating Negroes was 
much larger and the number of northward migrating Negroes was much smaller 
than the census figures indicate. The figures of the census are based on the 
number of surviving migrants in each section, and, in order to arrive at the 
actual number of migrants, it would be necessary to take into consideration 


the difference in the death-rate of the Northern-born migrants (city dwellers) 
who moved into the South, as compared to the Southern-born Negroes (mostly 


RECENT MIGRATION 251 


The attention which the Northward Negro migration has attracted 
is out of proportion to its importance as compared to other migration 
movements in the decade 1910-20. It seems that the Negroes born in 
the North and West have a record for migration which far exceeds that 
of the Negroes born in the South. The Census of 1920 informs us 
that the percentage of Northern and Western Negroes living outside of 
their states of birth was 27.6 percent, as compared to only 19.2 percent 
for the Southern Negroes. Why should the Negroes of the North and 
West be so much more migratory than Negroes of the South? 

Another significant fact in regard to Negro migration of the period 
1910-20 is that it was mostly a movement from one section of the South 
to another, and not a movement to the North. As compared to the 340,- 
260 Negroes who left the South, there were 1,063,332 Negroes who mi- 
grated from one Southern state to another.® 

But the most outstanding fact about the migratory movement of 
I910-20 is that vastly more white people migrated than Negroes. The 
number of Southern white people who migrated from their native 
states between I910 and 1920 was 1,796,089,‘ and of this number 286,- 
039 migrated to the North and 194,447 migrated to the Northwest.° 

The South should have been as much excited over the departure of 
480,486 of her white population as over the departure of 340,260 of her 
colored folk. 

Having stated the bald facts in reference to the migratory movement 


dwellers in the country) who had moved into the North; also allowance would 
have to be made for the differences in sex and age between the Northern and 
Southern migrating groups, the latter perhaps being made up more of males 
and of individuals of advanced age. And finally, allowance would have to be 
made for the difference in the birth-rate of the migrating groups. All of these 
differences, I think, would favor an actual Southward migration in excess of 
the figures indicated by the census, and an actual Northward migration less than 
the figures indicated. 

® Census 1920, Vol. 2, p. 623. 

*Tbid., Vol. 2, p. 623. 

5 The figure 286,039 is the difference between the Southern-born whites living 
in the North in 1920 (See Census 1920, Vol. 2, p. 614) and the number living 
in the North in 1910 (See Census 1910, Vol. 1, p. 699). The Census Report here 
uses the term “North” to include New England and the Middle Atlantic, East 
North Central, and West North Central states. To ascertain the migration of 
the Southern whites between 1910 and 1920 to the Mountain and Pacific states, 
we deduct 335,542, the number of Southern-born inhabitants of these states in 
1910 (See Census roo, Vol. 1, p. 745), from 529,989, the number of Southern- 
born inhabitants of those states in 1920. (See Census 1920, Vol. 2, p. 631.) 


252 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


of white and colored people during the decade 1910-20, I shall now turn 
to a consideration of the influences which have determined that move- 
ment. 

The causes influencing Negro migration have been of two kinds, 
namely, social and economic. 

Among the social causes we need to set down the lynchings, peon- 
age, poor educational opportunities, injustice in the courts, chain- 
gangs, segregation laws, resulting in discomfort in travel, the depriva- 
tion of library and public park facilities, the exploitation of the Negro 
tenants by the white landlords, the bad housing conditions, and the gen- 
eral feeling that it is the purpose of the whites “to keep the 
Negro down.” Evidence that these considerations are important fac- 
tors is found in the effort of the white people, in sections where labor 
had become scarce, to bring about better conditions as an inducement 
for the Negroes to remain at home. 

Turning now to the economic causes of the migration we have to 
take into account the extraordinary demand for labor in the industrial 
centers. 

The outbreak of the World War brought into the United States a 
flood of gold from European countries to pay for war products and 
food. The European demand for munitions, and every kind of war 
equipment, brought into existence a number of new factories, and these 
in turn called for an enlarged output of mining products. At the same 
time the swell in the volume of money which had spread all over the 
country caused a marvelous increase in the demand for commodities. 

This extraordinary stimulation to manufacturing and mining created 
an unusual demand for labor; and the rapid rise in wages led to a rush 
of labor from the small towns and rural districts to the centers of in- 
dustry. 

The migration of labor to meet this extraordinary demand came 
mostly from the Southern states, for the reason that the low price of 
cotton, due to the paralysis of European factories, affected labor condi- 
tions in the South adversely. In the West, where the price of wheat 
was high, there was not the same inducement for laborers to leave the 
farms, but nevertheless so many of them did migrate that the problem 
of securing harvesters for the wheat became distressing. 

When in 1917 the United States entered the World War, the demand 
for labor, already great, was multiplied many fold, because of the estab- 
lishment of many munition plants, and other factories to turn out war 
supplies, the enormous work needed in the shipyards, the coal, iron, 


RECENT MIGRATION 253 


copper, zinc, and oil fields. The continual inflation of money and the 
rising wages increased the purchasing power of the people, and there 
was a demand for goods beyond the power of manufacturers to supply. 
In the face of all these increasing demands for commodities there was a 
declining supply of labor, due to the drafting of young men into the 
military and naval services, and the movement of our foreign popula- 
tion back to Europe. The labor shortage was such that every man and 
woman in the country who was able to work could get a job at good 
wages. The general complaint was that labor could not be had at any 
price. 

The movement of labor to meet the demand, after our entrance into 
the war, as during the ten years prior, was toward the industrial and 
mining centers, and was drawn from the same sections of the country. 
The white people of the South, in greater numbers than the colored 
people, were drawn into this movement. 

Young men and women by the thousands, from the towns and rural 
districts of the South, flocked to the departments in Washington, to the 
munition plants and other establishments in the industrial centers. 
Even many farmers with families, including both renters and owners 
of plantations, left their farms for the high wages of the factory. 

Due to the same influences, large masses of Negroes from the towns 
and rural districts were also drawn into this migratory movement. 

The demand for labor was so great that many industries in 
the North, which formerly had employed only white labor, were glad 
to give jobs to Negroes; and industries which formerly had employed 
only a few Negroes to do unskilled work were glad to hire more Ne- 
groes, and to train them for tasks which required skill. Consequently 
the Negroes came to share with the white people in the opportunity to 
earn high wages, and they, as the white people, rushed off to the in- 
dustrial centers. 

The migration of the Negroes toward the industrial centers at- 
tracted national attention more on account of the character of the mi- 
gration than on account of its volume, and gave rise to the erroneous 
notion that it was a movement confined to the Negro population and 
that it must, therefore, be accounted for by the discovery of causes 
which were influencing the Negroes but not the white people. 

The fact is that, in spite of the supposed natural migratory tendency 
of the Negro, the white people of the South have always migrated in 
greater numbers than the Negro, chiefly because they have been better 
acquainted with the opportunities outside of their places of birth, and 


254 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


better able financially to take advantage of them. A contrast in the di- 
rection of the white and Negro migrants is that the former have had a 
greater tendency to move Westward, attracted by the cheaper and more 
fertile lands. In the decade 1910-20 the West South Central states, 
Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, gained in population 1,257,- 
042, largely due to the migration of white people from the South At- 
lantic and East South Central states. During the same period 286,039 
whites migrated to the North, and 194,447 to the Northwest. 

On the other hand, the Negro migrants, being more distinctly a wage 
class, have tended to move toward the industrial centers. 

The migratory tendency of the Southern white people, as compared 
to the Negroes, is shown in the following statistics: According to the 
IQIO census, 22.4 percent of the white people were living in some other 
state than that in which they were born, as compared to 16.6 percent 
for the Negroes; and, according to the census of 1920, the figures were 
22.5 percent for the whites, and 19.9 percent for the Negroes.® 

As to the white people born in and living outside of their divisions 
in 1920, the figures were as follows: South Atlantic states, 11.6 per- 
cent; East South Central states, 22.2 percent; West South Central 
states, 8.9 percent. 

~ As to the Negroes born in and living outside of their divisions, the 
figures were: South Atlantic states, 11.3 percent; East South Central 
states, 17.9 percent; West South Central states, 5.9 percent.’ 

While these figures show that the white people of the South have 
up to 1920 always migrated in greater numbers and also in greater pro- 
portions than the Negro population, an examination of the last census 
brings out the fact that a turning-point has been reached in the respec- 
tive proportions of the Negro and white migrants. In both interstate 
and intersectional migration, the proportion of Negroes affected is now 
greater than that of the whites. The economic reasons for this change 
are: First, the opening of avenues of employment to Negroes hereto- 
fore closed; second, the increasing financial ability of the Negroes to 
migrate, and third, the increasing inducements for the white people to 
remain at home, arising from the development of diversified industries. 

It is the rule among all old civilized countries for the wage class to 
migrate more freely than the property-holding class, and, therefore, we 
should expect that in the future the Negroes, who are predominantly 

* Census 1920, Vol. 2, p. 622. 


*Tbid., p. 616. 
* Ibid., Vol. z, p. 623. 





RECENT MIGRATION 255 


wage workers, will migrate in larger proportions, though less in the ag- 
gregate than the white people who are predominantly property holders. 
The amazing thing is that heretofore the property-holding class in the 
South has been the more migratory. 

A striking difference between the migration of Negroes and that 
of the whites of the South is that the former are more influenced by 
mass contagion and the blandishments of labor agents, and usually de- 
part in batches and reach their destination in batches; while the latter, 
acting more on individual initiative, depart from widely separated 
localities and arrive at widely scattered destinations, so that neither 
their departure nor their arrival attracts public attention. 

Among the other purely economic causes affecting Negro migration 
in 1910-20, one of importance was the devastations of the boll weevil in 
the cotton belt. In Mississippi the heaviest migration of Negroes was 
from the counties most affected by the boll weevil.1? Referring to 
Georgia, Z. R. Pettet, state crop estimator, says, “The Negro exodus 
has been greatest in the territory that has been infested (with the wee- 
vil) long enough to make it difficult to grow a paying crop of cotton. 
The reported acute labor-shortage line coincides closely with the third- 
year infestation, except along the southern line." 

In addition to the ravages of this insect, there was a destructive 
flood which swept through the black belt of Alabama in July, 1916.'? 
In a number of counties, “food was distributed to the starving Negroes 
by the Federal Department of Agriculture and by the organization of 
the Red Cross.’ 1% “Nearly $50,000 was made up in and around the 
town of Demopolis, and distributed among the most destitute ones. In 
several counties they were given work on the public roads for a time. 
The lumber mills, and other public employments, attempted to take care 
of the surplus of labor. ** 

“By the spring of 1916,” says the Department of Labor’s report on 
Negro migration, “there was a real surplus of labor throughout the 
black belt which was ready to respond to the demand for labor 
and higher wages in the northern and eastern States.’ 

°“Negro Migration 1916-17,” U. S. Department of Labor, 1919, pp. 17, 21, 


50, 76, 79. 
* Ibid., p. 56. 
“ I[bid., p. 16. 
4 Thid., p. 60. 
* Thid., p. 61. 
* Tbid., p. 61. 
* [bid., p. 62. 


256 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





However, neither the boll weevil nor the floods has had more than 
an accelerating effect upon the Negro migration. In considerable num- 
bers the Negroes migrated from sections where there had been no wee- 
vil and no floods. The migration of the Negroes was due fundamen- 
tally to general economic conditions affecting all sections of the country, 
and influencing whites and blacks alike. 

Since the World War the northward migration of the Negroes has 
continued, though at a diminished rate, and the same is true of the mi- 
gration of the white people. This migration of both races toward the 
industrial centers, and the less exploited agricultural regions will con- 
tinue as long as the floodgates of foreign immigration are kept closed. 
The absence of a reservoir of foreign labor is causing an unusual de- 
mand for the native workers, and giving employment to Negroes in 
many industries heretofore epen only to whites. In the course of time, 
however, our country, like the old countries of Europe, will have filled 
up and will have a yearly surplus of native labor. When that time 
comes, the Negroes may find it less easy to secure employment in the 
industrial centers. 

While the economic motive has been the larger factor in the migra- 
tion of the Negro, we should not underestimate the other motives. 
Among the thousands of Negroes swept along with the current toward 
the industrial centers, there were undoubtedly some whose main con- 
sideration in moving was the desire to escape the terrifying and unbear- 
able behavior of their white neighbors. Also there were among the 
Negro migrants some whose main motive was an aspiration for better 
educational opportunities for the children, and the hope of finding out- 
side of the South an atmosphere of greater civic freedom. The white 
people in the South migrate in very large numbers primarily to get bet- 
ter education for their children, but do not for this reason go out of 
their native states. They move from the backwoods to the progressive 
towns. 

Giving due credit to the number of Negro migrants who may have 
been influenced by undesirable conditions, there can still be no doubt of 
the fact that if the social conditions had been ever so much better than 
they were, the volume of Negro migration would not have been greatly 
less, since the white people, with no complaint against social conditions, 
migrated in greater numbers than the Negroes. 

The Northern Negro press, which accepts only the social motive for 
the Negro migration, regards it as a just punishment to the South for 
its bad treatment of the Negro, and is in high glee over the imagined 


RECENT MIGRATION 257 


discomfiture of the Southern whites over the shortage of labor. It has, 
throughout the period of Negro migration, conducted a campaign in 
the interest of inducing as many Negroes as possible to leave the South. 
Great bundles of their papers have been sent to towns all through the 
South, containing harrowing presentations of the lynchings, peonage, 
jim-crow cars, and other malignities of which the Negroes are the vic- 
tims, and, at the same time, advertising the high wages, greater freedom 
and better general treatment of the Negro in the North. 

The effort to explain the migrations of the Negroes of the United 
States as mainly influenced by social considerations leads to numerous 
contradictions and inconsistencies. 

For example, if the Negro migrations are assumed to arise from 
social conditions, 1.e., from oppression and outrages, we shall have to 
admit that the Negro is subject to greater oppression and outrages in 
the North than in the South, for the reason that the Northern Negro 
is even more migratory than the Negro of the South. 

If it be contended that the Negro migration was prompted mainly 
by the desire to escape undesirable social conditions, we shall have to 
make clear that social conditions in the South became, during Ig10-20, 
much worse than they had ever been before, and there is no set of facts 
to support such a view. 

If it be assumed that the status of the Negro has been gradually 
becoming worse, how are we to account for the large volume of Negro 
migration from the North to the South? The Negro Year Book, 
1925-6, says: “It is noteworthy that while the migration of Negroes 
to the North goes on, the migration of Negroes to the South continues 
and that the number of (Northern born) Negroes, 47,223, living in the 
South in 1920 was 5,734 more than the number, 41,489, from the North 
and West who were living in the South in 1910.” 1® What are the 
outrageous conditions which have been driving the Negroes from the 
North? and what fools to migrate into a country where they have never 
known anything but the heel of oppression? 

Again, if the Negroes have been fleeing only from undesirable social 
conditions, why do so many Negroes from Mississippi migrate to Lou- 
isiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas? In 1g9to there were more 
Mississippi-born Negroes in Arkansas alone than in the whole of the 
North. ?? 

Or why should so large a proportion of the Negro migration of 


7 Ras 
* Donald, op. cit., p. 16. 


258 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





1916-17 have chosen to locate in Tennessee, Kentucky, and West 
Virginia ? 38 | 

The migration of Negroes since the World War, as prior to it, has 
been influenced, like that of the white people, primarily by economic 
considerations, and no other theory_is consistent with the facts. 

The greatest inconsistency of those who claim that the Negroes mi- 
grate because of persecution and oppression is that they, above all 
others, are most prone to brag of the “marvelous progress’ which the 
Negroes have made since the Civil War. They swell with pride over 
the fact that the Negroes own some 10,000,000 acres of land—an area 
larger than England or Belgium—that they have accumulated $1,500,- 
000,000 of property, that their literacy has increased from ten percent 
to seventy percent, etc., etc. Surely if the Negroes have achieved all 
of these wonderful things in such a short time, they must have done 
so in an environment which was not altogether crushing, and surely 
some of their white neighbors must have reached out to them a helping 
hand. 

Turning to the migration of Northern-born Negroes into the South, 
the explanation is that the South offers excellent opportunities for the 
professionally educated Negro. There is an ever-increasing demand 
in the South for teachers in Negro colleges and universities, for doc- 
tors, dentists, lawyers, and preachers; and, because professional educa- 
tion is further advanced in the North than in the South, many North- 
ern-educated Negroes find their best opportunity for a career in the 
South. Also, due to a similar backwardness in professional education 
among the Southern white people, many professionally educated North- 
ern-born white men and women find inviting fields for work in 
the Southland. A large proportion of the professors in Southern col- 
leges and universities for the white people are Northern born. The 
South has always been hospitable to this class of Northern immigrants, 
and nothing has done more to remove sectional prejudice and promote 
mutual sympathy and good will than the commingling of white North- 
ern and Southern men and women in our institutions of learning. 

A contrast between the white and Negro migrants into the South is 
that the latter, with few exceptions, tend to propagate and intensify 
sectional prejudice and to cultivate animosities between the blacks and 
whites. 

The effects of the Negro migration since the World War have been 
in one respect equally disadvantageous to both races. Because the mi- 

* Donald, op. cit., pp. 53-5. 


RECENT MIGRATION 25 





gration was too sudden it inconvenienced the South in some districts 
by displacing labor which could not be as suddenly replaced, and it was 
a detriment to the Negroes by reason of the overcrowding of the houses 
in centers to which they migrated, and the inability of so many new- 
comers to adjust themselves to their new environment. The riots in 
Chicago, Washington, St. Louis, and elsewhere grew out of conditions 
made by a too sudden influx of the Negro population. 

Aside from the inconvenience growing out of the loss of Negro la- 
borers in a few sections of the South, the Southern states have lost 
nothing by the Negro migration. In spite of the number of Negroes 
who left the South during 1910-20, the South had a larger Negro 
population in 1920 than in 1910 by 162,632. And as an offset to the 
departure of 330,260 Negroes, the South gained in foreign white stock 
313,947,'° and in total white population 3,584,759. 

So far as agriculture is concerned, the shortage of Negro labor in 
the few sections where there has been a shortage, has had the effect of 
doing away with the one-crop system in favor of smaller farms and 
more diversified cultivation. The transition to more diversified and in- 
tensive farming is bringing larger returns per acre, and tending to keep 
in the country the young white men who heretofore have been migrat- 
ing to other sections. 

So far as domestic service is concerned, the South would be better 
off without the Negro or other domestic class just as the West is better 
off without such a class. In the West every member of a family is hab- 
ituated to domestic work and, by means of up-to-date kitchen and other 
household equipment, the people live on a high standard and save mil- 
lions of dollars which the Southern people throw away on servants. 
The departure of the Negro would raise the wages of all labor, and give 
the South a laboring class living on high standards and forming an as- 
similable element of citizenship. If the Negroes were out of the way, 
the South would have the same chance to get white labor as any other 
section of the country. A Southern man, or Northern man for that mat- 
ter, can hardly be found who would not admit that the South, or any 
other section, would be better off with a population all white. But 
while the Southern people realize this fact, they are not anxious to see 
the change come about. They are adjusted to the state of things which 
exists, and, upon the whole, they like the Negro. 

As for the effects upon the Negro of his migration to the North, 
they may be looked at from two points of view. 

Census 1920, Vol. 2, p. 902. 


260 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


From the standpoint of physical vitality the movement of the Negro 
towards the cities of the North might be regarded as a very great mis- 
take for the reason that away from the South Negroes die faster than 
they are born. Perhaps Booker T. Washington had this fact in mind 
when he urged the Negro to remain in the country and not rush off to 
the cities. Is not the city too much of a lure for the Negro and is he 
not facing extinction by yielding to it? But assuming that the Negro 
cannot survive in the cities of the North, is that a sufficient reason why 
he should tarry forever in the country? Is it not a fact that what we 
call the best class of white people, i. e., those of wealth and culture, who 
mostly dwell in tne big cities, are tending toward extinction because of 
the decline in their birth-rate? And yet do they not continue to drift 
toward the great cities? 

From the standpoint of the cultural advance of the Negro, there are 
reasons for thinking that his migration to the great cities is an immense 
gain. If Dr. DuBois is right in his view that the salvation of the Negro, 
or any race, is to be found only in its exceptional men, the “Talented 
Tenth” who serve as guides to the masses, then the great city must be 
for the Negro, as for the white man, an important factor in furnishing 
the opportunity and inspiration for distinguished leadership. 

The general drift of population toward the great centers, and the 
rapid rise in standards of living in consequence of it, are raising many 


difficult social problems; until the white man has solved them he should 


be a little charitable with the Negro for his not solving them. 





[gd cad Bim d D6 
THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE AND ART 


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CHAPTER 36 
WRITINGS OF NORTHERN WHITES 


References to the Negro by Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper—The 
Anti-slavery Poetry of Whittier, Lowell, and Whitman—Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin—Olmsted’s Journeys through the South—Sociological Studies 
of the Negro 


| attempting to indicate the extent to which the Negro has influenced 
the literature of the Caucasians in the United States, it is difficult 
to know what to include or leave out. Beside the poems and novels with 
Negro themes, we have hundreds of pamphlets, thousands of maga- 
zine articles, hundreds of thousands of newspaper stories, and whole 
libraries of histories and government documents. The tons of paper 
used up in writings about the Negro would pretty nearly fill all of the 
freight cars in the United States, and the floods of ink used upon the 
paper would form a lake of sufficient magnitude to immerse a large 
proportion of the Caucasian population of the earth. 

Within the limits of a single chapter I can only refer briefly to some 
of the publications which have survived and taken rank as literature as 
distinguished from history, economies, and polemics. 

Among the earliest nineteenth century writers to portray the Negro 
were Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. The former 
gives us many picturesque and humorous sketches of Negro life, and 
the latter in his Satanstoe gives us a realistic account of the annual 
festival held by the Negroes of New York in Colonial times, and 
known as Pinkster. Incidentally Cooper throws an interesting side- 
light on Negro superstitions. 

When the slavery controversy arose in the United States, John 
Greenleaf Whittier came to be famous as an anti-slavery poet. He set 
to meter all phases of slavery from the slave ship to the slave’s death. 

The following lines are from “The Slave Ships’: 

“Gloomily stood the captain, 
With his arms upon his breast, 
With his cold brow sternly knotted, 

And his iron lip compressed. 


‘Are all the dead ones over?’ 
263 


264 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 








Growled through that matted lip,— 
‘The blind ones are no better, 
Let’s lighten the good ship!’ 


“Hark, from the ship’s dark bosom, 
The very sounds of hell! 

The ringing clank of iron,— 
The maniac’s short, sharp yell. 

The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled,— 
The starving infant’s moan,— 

The horror of a breaking heart 
Poured through a mother’s groan.” 


“The Farewell’ expresses the lament of a slave mother over the 
sale of her daughters: 
“Gone, gone—sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,— 


Toiling through the weary day, 
And at night the spoiler’s prey. 


“O that they had earlier died, 
Sleeping calmly, side by side, 
Where the tyrant’s power is o’er, 
And the fetter galls no more. 


“Gone, gone—sold and gone, 

To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia’s hills and waters,— 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters.” 


James Russell Lowell was very profoundly stirred up over the in- 
stitution of slavery, and, both in poetry and prose, attacked it with all 
the versatility and scintillation of his genius. His reactions to slavery 
were expressed chiefly in his Biglow Papers, which consisted of a series 
of satirical poems written in the vernacular of the common man, and 
covering all aspects of the slavery controversy. The Mexican War, 
the Acts of Congress and those of the Presidents, and the behavior and 
attitudes of the leading public men became targets for his wit and 
satire. Much of his Biglow Papers is unintelligible to the present-day 
reader because of the many references to events and men known only 
to the historian. His first paper, dated 1846, gives his general reaction 
to slavery and is a fair sample of his brilliant satire: 

“Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, 
Haint they cut a thunderin’ swarth, 


(Helped by Yankee renegaders,) 
Thru the vartu o’ the North! 


——— 


WRITINGS OF NORTHERN WHITES 


We begin to think it’s nater 

To take sarse an’ not be riled ;— 
Who’d expect to see a tater 

All on eend at bein’ biled? 

* * * 

“They may talk o’ Freedom’s airy 

Tell they’re pupple in the face,— 
It’s a grand gret cemetary 

Fer the barthrights of our race; 
They jest want this Californy 

So’s to lug new slave-states in 
To abuse ye, an’ to scorn ye, 

An’ to plunder ye like sin. 


“Aint it cute to see a Yankee 
Take sech everlastin’ pains 
All to git the Devil’s thankee, 
Helpin’ on ’em weld their chains? 
Wy, it’s jest ez clear ez figgers, 
Clear ez one an’ one make two, 
Chaps thet make black slaves o’ niggers 
Want to make wite slaves 0’ you... 
* * * 
“Wal, go ’long to help ’em stealin’ 
Bigger pens to cram with slaves, 
Help the men that’s ollers dealin’ 
Insults on your fathers’ graves; 
Help the strong to grind the feeble, 
Help the many agin the few, 
Help the men thet call your people 
Witewashed slaves an’ peddlin’ crew! 


“Massachusetts, God forgive her, 
She’s akneelin’ with the rest, 
She, thet ough’ to ha’ clung fer ever 
In her grand old eagle-nest ; 
She thet ough’ to stand so fearless 
Wile the wracks are round her hurled, 
Holdin’ up a beacon peerless 
To the oppressed of all the world! 


“Ha’n’t they sold your colored seamen? 
Ha’n’t they made your env’ys wiz? 

Wut’ll make ye act like freemen? 
Wut’ll git your dander riz? 

Come, Ill tell ye wut [’m thinkin’ 
Is our dooty in this fix, 

They’d ha’ done ’t ez quick ez winkin’ 
In the days o’ seventy-six. 


265 


206 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“Clang the bells in every steeple, 
Call all true men to disown 
The tradoocers of our people, 
The enslavers o’ their own; 
Let our dear old Bay State proudly 
Put the trumpet to her mouth, 
Let her ring this messidge loudly 
In the ears of all the South:— 


“°T'll return ye good for evil 
Much ez we frail mortils can, 
But I wun’t go help the Devil 
Makin’ man the cus o’ man; 
Call me coward, call me traitor, 
Jest ez suits your mean idees,— 
Here I stand a tyrant-hater, 
An’ the friend o’ God an’ Peace!’ 


“Ef id my way I hed ruther 

We should go to work an’ part, 
They take one way, we take t’other, 

Guess it wouldn’t break my heart; 
Man had ough’ to put asunder 

Them thet God has noways jined, 
An’ I shouldn’t gretly wonder 

Ef there’s thousands o’ my mind.” * 


That odd genius, Walt Whitman, gave the Negro problem a fillip 
in his poem, “I Sing the Body Electric.” A slave is on the block for 
sale and Whitman plays the part of auctioneer as follows: 


“Gentlemen, look on this wonder, 

Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot 
be high enough for it; 

For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of 
years without one animal or plant, 

For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily 
roll’d. 


“In this head the all-baffling brain, 

In it and below it the makings of heroes... . 

Within there runs blood, 

The same old blood! The same red-running 
blood! 


There swells and jets a heart; there all passions, 
desires, reachings, aspirations. 

(Do you think they are not there because they are 
not express’d in parlours and lecture rooms?) 


* Biglow Papers, pp. 65, 66, 68-70. 


WRITINGS OF NORTHERN WHITES 267 


“This is not only one man, this is the father of 
those who shall be fathers in their turns; 

In him the start of populous states and rich 
republics, 

Of him countless immortal lives and countless 
embodiments and enjoyments. 

How do you know who shall come from the off- 
spring of his offspring through the centuries? 
(Who might you find you have come from your- 
self, if you could trace back through centuries? )” 


Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was the 
most sensational and also the most influential book of all the anti- 
slavery literature. I remember reading this book in my youth and 
weeping over it with no thought whatever of its breathing an animus 
against the South. It impressed me as a truthful and intensely interest- 
ing revelation of human nature with no more exaggeration than is legiti- 
mate and necessary in all works of art in order to convey realistic im- 
pressions. 

The chief reason that Uncle Tom’s Cabin proved to be a firebrand 
to the South was that it happened to be written in the year 1852. If 
it had been written in 1924 it probably would not have been so widely 
read, but would certainly have been read with absorbed interest in all 
sections of the country and would have taken respectable rank as a 
piece of historical literature. 

Mark Twain wrote more about the Negro than Mrs. Stowe, and 
looked at him from more angles. While Mrs. Stowe dealt with the 
Negro from the standpoint of the controversialist, Mark Twain dealt 
with him primarily from the standpoint of the artist. No Southern 
writer has seen more of the humorous and comic side of the Negro than 
Mark Twain and no Northern writer has seen more of the tragic side. 
A fuller discussion of Mark Twain and the Negro will be found in the 
next chapter. 

Frederick L. Olmsted, a native of Connecticut, who made several 
journeys through the South between 1855 and 1861, embodied his ob- 
servations in three books: Seaboard Slave States, 1856; A Journey in 
the Back Country, 1861; and A Journey Through Texas, 1857. These 
books, in addition to having historic value, possess a human interest, a 
picturesqueness of description and charm of narration, which entitle 
them to rank as literature. The author was a man of unusual insight, 
of outstanding individuality, and of forceful exposition. Some of his 
descriptions remind one strikingly of the style of Charles Dickens. 


268 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


The Negro problem looms up in Jack London’s South Sea Tales, 
wherein two ideas stand out; first, that, ““The white man’s mission is to 
form the world,’ and second, that, ‘The black will never understand 
the white, nor the white the black.” These ideas have been taken as 
the text of a book, The Clash of Color, by an English author, Basil 
Mathews. 

Vachel Lindsay, a poet who interprets the life of the Middle West, 
and attempts to bring poetry back to an art appealing to the ear rather 
than the eye, has in his repertoire several song-verses on the Negro 
of which the following is notable: 


a 


THE CONGO 
Av TUDY OF. TE NEGRO eR AC 


I. Their Basic Savagery 


Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, 

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, 

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, A deep rolling 
Pounded on the table, bass. 
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, 

Hard as they were able, 

Boom, boom, BOOM, 

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, 

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. 

THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision. 

I could not turn from their revel in derision. 


THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH More deliber- 


THE BLACK, ate. 
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDENSolemnly 
TRACK. chanted. 


Then along that riverbank 

A thousand miles 

Tatooed cannibals danced in files; 

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song 


And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong. A rapidly piling 
And “BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the climax of speed 
warriors, and racket. 


“BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, 
“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, 

Harry the uplands, 

Steal all the cattle, 

Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, 

Bing. 

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,” 


WRITINGS OF NORTHERN WHITES 269 





A roaring, epic, rag-time tune With a philo- 
From the mouth of the Congo sophic pause. 
To the Mountains of the Moor 

Death is an Elephant, 


Torch-eyed and horrible, Shrilly and with 
Foam-flanked and terrible. a heavily ac- 
BOOM, steal the pygmies, cented metre. 


BOOM, kill the Arabs, 

BOOM, kill the white men, 

moO .HOO, HOO, 

Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost Like the wind in 
Burning in hell for his hand-maimed host. the chimney. 
Hear now the demons chuckle and yell 

Cutting his hands off, down in Hell. 

Listen to the creepy proclamation, 

Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, 

Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay, 


Blown past the marsh where the butter-flies play :— All the o 
“Be careful what you do, sounds very 
Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, golden. 

And all of the other Heavy accents 
Gods of the Congo, very heavy. 
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Light accents 
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, very light. Last 
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” line whispered. 


Part II of the poem entitled “Their Irrepressible High Spirits,” and Part III 
entitled “The Hope of Their Religion,” follow Part I above quoted by courtesy of 
The Macmillan Company from Vachel Lindsay’s The Congo and Other Poems, 
copyright by them in rgr4. 


A novel, Birthright, by T. S. Stribling, portrays the life of the edu- 
cated Negro. The hero, Peter Siner, is a graduate of Harvard, and 
the heroine, Cissie Deldine, is also well educated. Both are mulattoes. 
The author attributes the superiority of these two individuals to their 
white blood. Of Peter he says: “It was the white blood in his own 
veins that had sent him struggling up North, that had brought him 
back with this flame in his heart for his own people. It was the white 
blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to stand up, to speak an un- 
broken tongue, to gather around her the delicate atmosphere and charm 
of a gentlewoman.” 

Veiled Aristocrats by Gertrude Sanborn is a novel showing the in- 
fluence of white blood in Negro veins, and the evil of miscegenation. 
The plot is laid in Chicago. 

Waldo Frank is the author of a novel, Holiday, which deals with 


270 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





race prejudice and the tragedy resulting from the affinity between 
a Southern white girl and a Negro youth. 

Among the authors who have given us sociological studies of the 
Negro, several deserve to be mentioned because of the high literary 
character of their work. Frederick Hoffman, who in 1896 was statis- 
tician for the Prudential Life Insurance Company, undertook a study 
of the vitality of the Negro with a view to determining whether the 
Negro was a safe risk for a life insurance company. The results of his 
investigation came out under the title Race Traits and Tendencies of 
the American Negro. 

This was the first exhaustive study of the data bearing upon the 
Negro’s vitality. Mr. Hoffman thought that the increasing death-rate 
of the Negro indicated inferior vitality and the ultimate extinction of 
the race. The data up to the time of Mr. Hoffman’s investigation seemed 
to justify his conclusions. 

More recently Ray Stannard Baker of Boston has visited the South 
and West for the purpose of studying the Negro problem at first hand, 
and has embodied the results of his observations in Following the Color 
Line, 1908. 

Mr. Baker displays no sectional bias, but is equally sympathetic 
with the Negro and the white man in the difficult problems of adjust- 
ment which they have to face. He is a man of broad grasp and dis- 
criminating judgment. 

Another study of the Negro problem by a Northern journalist is that 
by Raymond Patterson in his book The Negro and His Needs. Mr. 
Patterson is a graduate of Yale University, and was a classmate and 
friend of William Howard Taft. After serving for years as a news- 
paper correspondent at Washington, Mr. Patterson made an extensive 
tour through the South with a view to acquainting himself with the 
conditions underlying the Negro problem. He wrote a series of letters 
embodying his observations for the Chicago Tribune, and in 1911 revised 
and republished these letters in book form. A foreword to the book, 
written by his friend, President Taft, heartily commends the author’s 
presentation of facts as valuable aids to the understanding of the Negro 
problem, but, of course, disclaims any endorsement of the author’s 
conclusions, 

The following extracts will give some idea of the general reaction 
of Mr. Patterson to the problem: 

“The Southern man is too close to the negro and the Northern man 


WRITINGS OF NORTHERN WHITES 271 


too far away. Somewhere between these two widely different points of 
view must be found ultimately the solution of the Negro problem.” # 

“T doubt if there is a first-class hotel in any large Northern city 
which could make a practice of receiving Negro guests and keep out 
of bankruptcy. Yet in these same Northern communities, where, very 
properly, the Negro is not granted the slightest semblance of social 
equality, the demand is constantly made that the South shall permit 
him to vote and hold important offices, which would of necessity in- 
volve him in constant association with the white people. The people 
of the North must divest themselves of the idea that the welfare of 
the Negro is for the present at least in any way connected with the 
exercise of the tight of suffragel*/ 0% 

“T do not believe any intelligent, fair-minded, and liberal Northern 
man can spend even a few months in an exclusive investigation of the 
race question without becoming convinced, as I have become convinced, 
that the granting of suffrage to the Negroes, immediately after the war, 
was a horrible blunder. For while here and there one may find Negroes 
who are eminently fitted to exercise the right of suffrage, the time 
has not yet come when it is safe to give the ballot to the Negro 
millions. It is doubtless true that the methods adopted by the South 
to eliminate the Negro from politics were at first generally cruel, and 
are now frequently unconstitutional, but an honest survey of the 
situation must prove that they adopted the only way to repair the 
serious breach in the social and commercial fabric of the South, and 
that the end justified the means.®... 

“Tt is a simple thing to stand in a Northern pulpit or to sit in a 
Northern office chair and from that safe vantage ground to speak or 
write about equal rights, the genius of the American Constitution, the 
beauty of a free ballot; but the political situation in the South is not a 
matter of theory, but of fact. If it happens to come in conflict with 
our American institutions, so much the worse for the institutions. 
Looked at from the standpoint of theory, the existing political situa- 
tion in all the Southern States is a cruel outrage, a manifest violation 
of the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence; looked at 
in the light of social, commercial, and moral conditions, it is evident that 
to disturb present conditions rashly, in obedience to the voice of unin- 

* Patterson, The Negro and His Needs, p. 9. 


*Thid., p. 107. 
*Tbid., p. 109. 


272 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
formed Northern demagogues, would be disastrous, first to the white 
man, but ultimately and most completely to the black man. 

“To travel through the South is to become constantly more and 
more impressed with the fact that the best interests of the negro are 
not in any way identified with politics. Whether he has or has not 
the ballot is a matter which may well be left for settlement until his 
material and intellectual condition has been vastly improved. For 
what the Negro most needs to-day is education of head and hand, an 
education whose sole object shall be to help him earn his daily bread, 
to teach him to dispose intelligently of the fruits of his labor. Give 
the ballot to-day to the tens of thousands of ignorant negroes in the 
cane fields of Louisiana, and they will be much worse off in a year’s 
time than they now are.®... 

“Just at the present time, the great masses of the Negroes are dense- 
ly ignorant but they have their race prejudice, just as much as the white 
man, and when they have the ballot their votes will go to the Negro 
candidate, never to the white man.’... 

“The manifest future of the Negro race in America lies along the 
line of mental and industrial culture. Booker T. Washington is right, 
and Burghardt DuBois and T. Thomas Fortune are dangerously wrong. 
The Negro editors of the North, who write inflammatory editorials 
which are circulated among the ignorant plantation hands, are not the 
real friends of the black race. Booker T. Washington has had to win 
his victories devoid of the sympathy and support of the leaders of his 
own race. Yet, in some strange way, this great Negro, a century ahead of 
his own people in intellectual grasp of a complex situation, sees clearly 
that the black man must be equipped to fight the real battles of the 
world, that he must learn economy and frugality, that he must acquire 
property, and that he must make for himself a place in the community 
from which he cannot be dislodged... . 

“Tn conclusion, the country must not forget the complications of the 
race question. There are issues at stake involving politics, education, 
labor, immigration, industrial and agricultural necessities, all of which 
must be settled long before we reach the great issue of possible social 
equality, which, after all, for the present century, is only the fabric of 
a dream. 

“Finally, let me reiterate the declaration that the only permanent 

° Patterson, op. ctt., pp. 112-13. 


LOI, 0. LEA, 
*Ibid., p. 2006. 


WRITINGS OF NORTHERN WHITES 273 
settlement of the race question in America must come through the edu-. 
cation of the Negro; that this must proceed from the ground up 
through the district school, and not through the university; and that 
the people of New York, and of Illinois, and of Oregon are quite as 
responsible for negro illiteracy as the people of Georgia and Arkansas. 

“The uplifting of the negro must be done by the nation.” ® 

Robert E. Speer is the author of two books setting forth the Chris- 
tian conception of the race problem. The titles are Of One Blood and 
Race and Race Relations. 

Eugene O’Neill, playwright, has written two dramas dealing with 
Negro life—All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones. 

George S. Merriam is the author of a book, The Negro and the 
Nation, which is a study of the Negro problem from the standpoint of 
history. It covers the period from the introduction of slavery in 
America to 1906, and discusses the chief political events, including the 
Civil War and Reconstruction, growing out of the slavery issue. 

The author is a man of excellent scholarship, of historical insight, 
and of wide sympathy, which enable him to write without visible bias, 
or sectional coloring. In every phase of American history in which 
the Negro is involved he sees and frankly states the virtues and short- 
comings of both the North and the South. 

The distinguishing feature of Mr. Merriam’s book is its high ideal- 
ism. No one can fail to admire the staunch moral fiber which stands 
out on every page. The only criticism which a Southern man might 
make of Mr. Merriam is that his idealism implies a future relationship 
of the races which does not seem attainable in view of our knowledge 
of human nature as it is now constituted. 

In his last chapter, “Looking Forward,” Mr. Merriam says: 

“We, the people of the United States, are to face and deal with 
this matter. We are all in it together. Secession has failed, coloniza- 
tion is impossible. Southerner and Northerner, white man and black 
man, we must work out our common salvation. It is up to us,—it is up 
to us all! 

“The saving principle is as simple as the multiplication table or the 
Golden Rule. Each man must do his best, each must be allowed to do 
his best, and each must be helped to do his best. Opportunity for every 
one, according to his capacity and his merit,—that is democracy. Help 
for the weaker, as the strong is able to give it,—that is Christianity. 
Start from this center, and the way opens out through each special 

ei OtiheD. 211. 


274 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





difficulty. The situation is less a puzzle for the intellect than a chal- 
lenge to the will and heart. 

“First of all, it is up to the black man himself. His freedom, won 
at such cost, means only opportunity, and it is for him to improve the 
opportunity. As he shows himself laborious, honest, chaste, loyal to 
his family and to the community, so only can he win to his full manhood. 
The decisive settlement of the whole matter is being worked out in the 
cotton fields and cabins, for the most part with an unconsciousness of 
the ultimate issues that is at once pathetic and sublime,—by the upward 
pressure of human need and inspiration, by family affection, by hunger 
for higher things.’° .. . 

“But for the right Ra enone of the working relations of the two 
races, the heavier responsibility rests with the whites, because theirs is 
the greater power. They can prescribe what the blacks can hardly do 
other than accept. 

“What we are now facing is not slavery,—an institution that may 
be abolished by statute—but its offspring, Caste—a spirit pervasive, 
subtle, sophistical, tyrannic. It can be overcome only by a spirit more 
pervasive, persistent and powerful—the spirit of brotherhood... . 

“Each of us dreams his own dream, and thinks his own thoughts. 
Differ as we may, let us unite wherever we can in purpose and action. 
The perfect social ideal will be slow in realization, but it is to-day’s 
straightforward step along some plain path that is bringing us nearer 
to it. The black workman who every day does his best work; the 
white workman who welcomes him to his side; the trade-union that 
opens its doors alike to both colors; the teacher spending heart and 
brain for her pupils; the statesman planning justice and opportunity 
for all; the sheriff setting his life between his prisoner and the mob; 
the dark-skinned guest cheerfully accepting a lower place than his due 
at life’s feast; the white-skinned host saying, Friend, come up higher,— 
it is these who are solving the race problem.” !* 

* Merriam, The Negro and the Nation, p. 392. 


vind Gags Vbat neta tote y 
™ Ibid., p. 410. 


CHAPTER'37 
MARK TWAIN’S DELINEATION 


Pudd’nhead Wilson, Dealing with the Tragedy of the Mulatto—Tom Sawyer 
Abroad—General Attitude of Mark Twain toward the Negro 


N the writings of Mark Twain, the Negro plays a conspicuous part 

in Tom Sawyer Abroad, Huckleberry Finn, and Pudd’nhead Wilson. 
Mark Twain came from slave-holding stock. His father received 
several slaves by inheritance. Jennie, the house servant, and Uncle 
Ned, the general utility man, were the companions of Mark Twain’s 
youth. From them he became acquainted with the ghost stories and 
other superstitious lore characteristic of the slaves. In addition to his 
father’s slaves, Mark Twain had an opportunity to know the thirty 
slaves belonging to his uncle, John Quarles. One of the latter fur- 
nished the model for his “Nigger Jim” in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry 
Finn. On one occasion Mark Twain was saved from drowning by a 
slave man, Neal Champ. In his youth he had seen a gang of Negro 
men and women chained together awaiting shipment. When he grew 
to manhood and married, he employed Negro servants and one of them, 
Aunt Rachel, his cook, became the “Auntie Good” in A True Story. 

When Mark Twain moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1871, he 
came to know very well Harriet Beecher Stowe, authoress of Uncle 
Tom's Cabin. He had every opportunity to know the Negroes inti- 
mately, and liked them, especially those of the ante-bellum type. In 
writing to his uncle, who had moved to Iowa, he said, “How do you 
like free soil? JI would like amazingly to see a good old-fashioned 
Negro.” 

In Mark Twain’s novel, Pudd’nhead Wilson, Negro characters 
play the leading parts. The story deals with just one aspect of the 
Negro problem and that is the tragedy of the mulatto. The central 
figures in the story are two mulattoes, Roxanna, a slave girl, and 
Valet de Chambre, her son. The former was only one-sixteenth Negro, 
having been born of a light-mulatto woman and a white F. F. V. Her 
son was thirty-one parts white, having been born of Roxanna and a 
white man of some distinction in Missouri. Both of these mulattoes 

279 


276 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

were so Caucasion in color and features that they were indistinguish- 
able from pure-blood whites. [Even the yellowish tint under the finger 
nails, which is a sure sign of Negro blood, was absent. ‘The scene is 
laid at Dawson’s Landing, a little town on the Missouri side of the 
Mississippi, half a day’s journey by steamboat below St. Louis. 

Roxanna (Roxy for short) was living at this town as the slave of 
one Percy Driscoll, who was a married man without children. On a 
certain day in 1830, two boy babies were born in the house, one by 
Driscoll’s wife and one by Roxy. The Driscoll child was named Thom- 
as and Roxy’s, Valet de Chambre, shortened to Chambers. 

Within a week Mrs. Driscoll died, and thereafter Roxy had the 
care of both babies. To the casual observer the chief difference in the 
appearance of the babies was the dainty white gown with its blue bows 
and flummery of ruffles of the Driscoll child and the miserably short 
gray tow-lined shirt of Roxy’s child. 

One day Percy Driscoll missed some money and, calling his domes- 
tic slaves before him, said, “I give you one minute,” he took out his 
watch. “If at the end of that time you have not confessed, I will not 
only sell all four of you, but I will sell you down the river.” 

This threat was, in the minds of the Negroes, equivalent to con- 
demning them to hell. 

Roxy reeled in her tracks and the color vanished out of her face; 
the others dropped on their knees as if they had been shot; tears 
gushed from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three 
answers came in one instant: 

Ditdonenatey. 

Pi idonerath: 

7 done ats 

The three servants, confessing to the crime, were sold up the coun- 
try, while Roxy, whose hand did not go up, was retained. The reason 
she could plead not guilty on this occasion was that she had lately 
“got religion,’ at a revival, and was able to resist the temptation when 
she saw the money on her master’s desk. But she had remarked to 
herself, “ ‘Dad blame dat revival. I wisht it had ’a’ be’n put off till 
tomorrow.’ ” 

In fact, Roxy had the prevailing slave habit of pilfering. 

Mark ‘Twain asks the question, ‘““‘Was she bad? Was she worse than 
the general run of her race? No. They had an unfair show in the 
battle of life, and they held it no sin to take military advantage of the 
enemy—in a small way; in a small way, but not in a large one. They 


MARK TWAIN’S DELINEATION 277, 
would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever they got a chance; 
or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery-bag, or a paper of 
needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small articles of clothing, 
or any other property of light value; and so far were they from con- 
sidering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to church and shout 
and pray the loudest and sincerest with their plunder in their pockets. 
A farm smokehouse had to be kept heavily padlocked, for even the col- 
ored deacon himself could not resist a ham when Providence showed 
him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome and 
longed for some one to love. But with a hundred hanging before him 
the deacon would not take two—that is, on the same night. On frosty 
nights the humane negro prowler would warm the end of a plank and 
put it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy 
hen would step onto the comfortable board, softly clucking her grati- 
tude, and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his 
stomach, perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who 
daily robbed him of an inestimable treasure—his liberty—he was not 
committing any sin that God would remember against him in the Last 
Great Day.” 

Roxy’s narrow escape from being sold down the river filled her 
with profound terror. She spent a sleepless night. “Her child could 
grow up and be sold down the river. The thought crazed her with 
horror. If she dozed and lost herself for a moment, the next moment 
she was on her feet flying to her child’s cradle to see if it was still 
there. Then she would gather it to her heart and pour out her love 
upon it in a frenzy of kisses, moaning, crying, and saying, ‘Dey sha’n’t, 
oh, dey sha’n’t—you’ po’ mammy will kill you fust.’”’ 

Once, when she was tucking it back in its cradle again, the other 
child nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. She went and 
stood over it a long time communing with herself: 

““What has my po’ baby done, dat he couldn’t have yo’ luck? He 
hain’t done noth’n’. God was good to you; why warn’t he good to 
him? Dey can’t sell you down de river. I hates yo’ pappy; he hain’t 
got no heart—for niggers he hain’t, anyways. I hates him, en I could 
kill him.’ She paused awhile, thinking; then she burst into wild sob- 
bings again, and turned away, saying, ‘Oh, I got to kill my chile, dey 
ain’t no yuther way—killin’ him wouldn't save de chile from goin’ down 
de river. Oh, I got to do it, yo’ po’ mammy’s got to kill you to save 
you, honey’—she gathered her baby to her bosom now, and began to 
smother it with caresses—‘Mammy’s got to kill you—how kin I do it. 


278 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


But yo’ mammy ain’t gwine to desert you—no, no; dah, don’t cry— 
she gwine wid you, she gwine to kill herself, too. Come along, honey, 
come along wid mammy ; we gwine to jump in de river, den de troubles 
o’ dis worl’ is all over—dey don’t sell po’ niggers down the river over 
yonder.’ ”’ 

Suddenly a strange light dawned in her eyes and she became lost in 
thought. Instead of drowning herself and her infant she conceived 
the idea of dressing her baby in Tom’s “flummery of ruffles’ and 
passing him off as the Driscoll heir. The idea was put into operation 
and worked. The white child was raised in the habiliments of a _ 
Negro and in Negro society and in time was sold. Roxy’s child as- 
sumed the name of Tom Driscoll and was petted and coddled as the 
heir to the throne. 

The fake Tom manifested misanthropic traits from his youth. He 
was devoid of affection and took a delight in wounding the feelings of 
his associates. He had tried to induce Percy Driscoll to sell Chambers, 
the real son, down the river. In order to prevent the possibility of 
this, Judge Driscoll, the brother of Percy, had purchased Chambers. 

Percy Driscoll died when the fake Tom was fifteen years old. By 
will Roxy was set free, and went chambermaiding on a Mississippi 
steamboat. Tom was taken into the indulgent care of Percy’s brother, 
Judge York Driscoll, whose wife had borne no children. The judge’s 
widowed sister, also childless, was living with him, and Tom’s coming 
into the home met with more than a cordial welcome. 

Tom, the counterfeit heir, was sent to Yale University, but returned 
in a short time with nothing to his credit. He was idle and dissipated, 
spending much of his time in the gambling dens of St. Louis. 

Roxanna, his mother, was obliged to retire from her chambermaid- 
ing on the Mississippi on account of rheumatism and she suffered the 
additional misfortune of losing all of her savings through a bank fail- 
ure in New Orleans. She returned, broken in health and fortune, to 
the Driscoll home at Dawson’s Landing. Here she was kindly received, 
but she was much grieved to learn that Judge Driscoll had been com- 
pelled to liquidate Tom’s gambling debts, and had threatened to dis- 
inherit him. 

When, by appointment, Roxy met her son, Tom, she was saddened 
to find, instead of the affectionate greeting of a white man for his old 
Negro mammy, an icy coldness and a fiendish disdain. Resentful of 
this manifestation of ingratitude, Roxy turned indignantly against her 


MARK TWAIN’S DELINEATION 279 


son, told him the truth of his parentage, and commanded that he give 
her one-half of the monthly allowance from his uncle, Judge Driscoll, 
upon penalty of her exposing his real identity. 

In a flash of anger Roxy says: “ ‘You call me names, en as good 
as spit on me when I comes here po’ en ornery en ’umble, to praise you 
for bein’ growed up so fine en handsome, en tell you how I used to nuss 
you en tend you en watch you when you ’uz sick en hadn’t no mother 
but me in de whole worl’, en beg you to give de po’ ole nigger a dollah 
’ for to git her som’n’ to eat, en you call me names—names, dad blame 
you. Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo’, and dat’s now, en it las’ 
on’y a half second—yo hear ?’ 

““Didn’t I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a good 
name, en made you a white gen’l’man en rich, wid store clothes on— 
en what did I git for it? You despised me all de time, en was al’ays 
sayin’ mean hard things to me befo’ folks, en wouldn’t ever let me 
forgit I’s a nigger—en—en—’ ”’ 

Under the threat of exposure Tom shared his allowance with his 
mother for a while. 

One day Tom was kicked like a dog by an Italian, but instead of 
striking back, had the Italian fined in the police court for assault. 
Judge Driscoll was deeply humiliated to find this show of cowardice in 
his family, and he promptly vindicated the family name by challeng- 
ing the Italian and wounding him in a duel. 

When Roxy heard of this event she looked in her son’s face with 
measureless contempt and said, “ “In you refuse’ to fight a man dat 
kicked you, ’stid 0’ jumpin’ at de chance. En you ain’t got no mo’ feel- 
in’ den to come en tell me, dat fetched sich a po’ low-down ornery rab- 
bit into de worl’. Pah, it makes me sick. It’s de nigger in you, dat’s 
what it is. Thirty-one parts o’ you is white, an on’y one part nigger, 
en dat po’ little one part is yo’ soul. ’Tain’t wuth savin’; tain’t wuth 
totin’ out on a shovel en throwin’ in de gutter. You has disgraced 
yo’ birth. What would yo’ pa think o’ you? It’s enough to make him 
turn in his grave.’ ... 

“Whatever has come 0’ yo’ Essex blood? Dat’s what I can’t 
understan’. En it ain’t on’y jist Essex blood dat’s in you, not by a 
long sight—’deed it ain’t. My great-great-great-gran’father en yo’ 
great-great-great-great-gran’father was Ole Cap’n John Smith, de 
highest blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en his great-great-gran’- 
mother or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de Injun queen, en 


280 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

her husban’ was a nigger king outen Africa—en yit here you 1s, 
a-slinkin’ outen a duel en disgracin’ our whole line like a ornery low- 
down hound. Yes, it’s de nigger in you.’ 

“She sat down on her candle-box and fell into a reverie. Tom 
did not disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in 
circumstances of this kind. Roxanna’s storm gradually went down, but 
it died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now 
and then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of mut- 
tered ejaculations. One of these was, ‘Ain’t nigger enough in him to 
show in his finger-nails, en dat takes mighty little—yit dey’s enough 
to paint his soul.’ ” t 

Pretty soon Tom was again overwhelmed with gambling debts and 
in danger of losing his inheritance through the discovery of the fact 
by his uncle. Systematic burglary in the town had failed to retrieve 
his losses. 

In order to save her son from possible disinheritance, Roxy agreed 
to allow her son to sell her into slavery, provided he sold her in the 
up-country. Tom accepted this proposition with alacrity and sold his 
mother for $600 but, contrary to her explicit injunctions, he sold her 
down the river. 

After suffering everything but death from overwork and ill-treat- 
ment on a slave plantation, Roxy, in revenge, assaulted her cruel over- 
seer and fled in disguise to St. Louis. Here she met her son, Tom, 
who had seen the advertisement of her running away, and who also 
had seen her master and was in the act of assisting him to recover 
her. 

When Roxy had wrung this confession from Tom she turned to 
him and, with scornful gaze, exclaimed, “ ‘What could you do? You 
could be Judas to yo’ own mother to save yo’ wuthless hide. Would 
anybody b’lieve it? No—a dog couldn’t. You is de low-downest or- 
neriest hound dat was ever pup’d into dis worl’—en I’s ’sponsible for 
it’—and she spat on him. He made no effort to resent this.” 

The climax of Tom’s career was the assassination of his benefactor, 
the uncle, to whose property he was heir. Tom was attempting to steal 
money to pay his gambling debts. ‘The opportunity seemed to be pro- 
pitious one night when his uncle, who had been examining his chest 
of valuables, fell asleep in his chair. As Tom reached for the chest 
the uncle awakened, the men grappled and in the struggle the uncle 
was stabbed to death. 

No character in fiction was ever painted in more repulsive coloring 





MARK TWAIN’S DELINEATION 281 


than that of this mulatto, Tom. He was a liar, coward, ingrate, hypo- 
crite, and murderer all in one lump. 

If, on the one hand, Tom’s small part of Negro blood made him the 
monster that he was, on the other hand, his mother’s greater part of 
Negro blood did not overcome in her the high intelligence and high 
spirit characteristic of the best type of Caucasian. 

Mark Twain was not attempting to expound the laws of heredity 
but was merely portraying life as it is, including the eccentricities and 
tragedies of racial intermixture. 

Pudd’nhead Wilson is all tragedy, and not the least of its tragic 
aspects is that the real Tom Driscoll, who was raised as a Negro slave, 
was so stamped with self-abasement that he could never feel at ease 
in white people’s society and that the mulatto, Roxanna, with her keen 
intellect, resourcefulness, intensity of feeling, and courage, remained 
illiterate and always spoke in the worst Negro vernacular. 

In Tom Sawyer Abroad there is a fine illustration of Negro super- 
stition in the remarks of “Nigger Jim,” when sailing down the Nile 
River, ‘‘ “Hit’s de lan’ of Egypt, de lan’ of Egypt, an’ I’s lowed to look 
at it wid my own eyes. An dah’s de river dat was turn to blood, an’ 
I’s looking at de very same groun’ whah de plagues was, an’ de lice, an’ 
de frogs, an’ de locus’, an’ de hail, an’ whah dey marked de door-pos’, 
an’ de angel o’ de Lord come by in de darkness o’ de night an’ sleu de 
first-born in all de lan’ o’ Egypt. Ole Jim ain’t worthy to see dis day.’ ” 

Trudging through the desert, Tom and Jim became thirsty, and 
while in search for water, there loomed before them three times the 
mirage of a very inviting lake. ‘“‘Dey’s been a lake an’ somethin’s 
happened, en’ de lake’s dead, en we’s seen its ghos’; we seen it twiste, 
en dat’s proof. De desert’s ha’nted, it’s ha’nted sho; Oh, Mars Tom, 
le’s git outen it; I’d druther die den have de night ketch us in it again 
en de ghos’ er dat lake come a-mournin’ aroun’ us en we asleep en doan 
know de danger we’s in. She’s dah agin, Mars Tom; she’s dah agin; 
en I knows I’s gwine to die; ’case when a body sees a ghos’ de third 
time, dat’s what it means.’ ” 

In portraying Negro characters in his novels, Mark Twain had no 
thought of dealing with the Negro problem. Like a true artist, he 
pictured the Negroes as they appeared in real life, the good and the 
bad. 

From a study of his writings some inferences might be drawn as 
to his general estimate of the Negro’s intellectual and emotional en- 
dowments, but such inferences, however well-drawn, would merely 


282 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


show that he was influenced by the prevailing ideas of his time and 
would not justify the view that he was trying by propaganda either to 
raise or lower the Negro’s rank among the races of mankind. 

The one thing which may be confidently said of his attitude toward 
the Negro is that it was sympathetic. He saw under the black skin 
the pulsations of a human being, and he revolted against the institu- 
tion of slavery, and every other form of degradation to which the Negro 
was subjected. 


_ eS eS Se 


CHAPTER 38 
WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 


Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus and Other Stories—Thomas Nelson Page, 
the Interpreter of the Virginia Slave—Dialect Stories of Ambrose Gonzales 
—Novels of Tom Dixon—James Lane Allen—Other Authors Dealing with 
the Negro 


MONG the Southern writers who have dealt with the Negro, the 
name of Joel Chandler Harris is preeminent. He is the master- 
ful interpreter of the Negro of the hinterland of Georgia, and the Car- 
olinas. The dialect in which his Uncle Remus and other stories are 
written, is that of the hinterland Negro. The older and more quaint 
Negro dialect is found along the islands and lowlands of the coast 
among the Negroes who are descendants of the first slaves imported. 
In one of Mr. Harris’s later publications, Nights with Uncle Remus, 
he attempts to give certain variants of the Uncle Remus stories in the 
coastal dialect, but he had no first-hand contact with the coastal people, 
and was not at home in handling their mode of thought and speech. 
The animal stories of Harris are transformations of the folk tales of 
the native African. These stories brought by the Negro slaves to 
America had to be modified to suit the animal life of the New World. 
Br’er Rabbit was substituted for the crafty gazelle; the fox or wolf 
was substituted for the leopard; the bear for the elephant, and so on. 
Speaking of Mr. Harris’s Uncle Remus, Gonzales says:: “These 
myths were known and told by Negro nurses to white children over all 
the Southern States, and in the West Indian Islands as well, but the 
artistry of Harris lay in the systematic understanding of children 
prompted by his kindly heart, and the human appeal of the tender re- 
lations of the little boy and the old Negro family servant was irresist- 
ible, not only to the children, but to those happy grown-ups who loved 
him. 

“Tt is interesting to know that in the low country of South Carolina, 
instead of ‘Br’er Rabbit’ and ‘Br’er Fox,’ it is invariably ‘Buh Rabbit 
‘en Buh Wolf.’ Strange, too, because wolves must have been found in 
upper Georgia or Carolina for more than a hundred years after they 

283 


284 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





were exterminated along the coast, within whose forests still abound 
the grey foxes whose natural prey is the rabbit. 

“Encouraged by the success of the ‘Uncle Remus’ stories, which 
greatly surprised this singularly modest man, Mr. Harris wrote novels 
and other stories of Georgia life among whites and blacks. While 
these were published successfully, it is upon the animal tales of “Uncle 
Remus’ that his fame has been permanently established. 

“In the introduction to one of his volumes Mr. Harris has made a 
rather exhaustive study and analysis of the origin of these Negro 
myths. That they are of African origin none can doubt, but, as on the 
West Coast of Africa, whence the slaves came to the American con- 
tinent and the West Indies, there are neither wolves, foxes, nor rab- 
bits, it would be interesting to know what African animals were their 
legendary prototypes. In Jamaica many of the ‘Uncle Remus’ tales are 
current and have been told to English children by their black nurses 
for generations, but in these the Anancy Spider, a black, hairy taran- 
tula-like creature, is substituted for the rabbit in the mythical triumph 
of mind over matter—cunning over physical strength—while the tiger 
does duty for the outwitted fox. Whence comes the Jamaica tiger? 
One can only surmise that tales of the strength and ferocity of the 
Jaguar (‘el tigre’ to the Spaniards), the great spotted cat of South and 
Central America, were brought from the mainland to the West Indies 
by the Indians of the Caribbean Coast or the earlier Negro slaves; but 
in Jamaica even the saddle-horse story is told complete in all its details, 
the spider, clapping spurs to the tiger’s flanks and riding him up to 
the house of the ‘nyung ladies’ (Mis’ Meadows an’ de gals), hitching 
him to a post and walking boldly in to love’s conquest. For the “Tar 
Baby’ story, instead of the violated spring, the drinking preserve of 
fox or wolf, a ‘tar pole’ is set up in a banana grove, and to this sticky 
lure the pilfering spider is found stuck fast by the lord of the plan- 
tation when he makes his morning rounds.” 4 

The most recent and also a most excellent piece of literature dealing 
with the ante-bellum Negro is The Black Border: Gullah Stories of 
the Carolina Coast by Ambrose FE. Gonzales. This book contains a 
number of very charming stories written in the peculiar dialect of a 
type of Negroes known as Gullah, and found along the coasts and is- 
lands of South Carolina and Georgia. The Negroes of this type are 
supposed to have come from the hinterland of Liberia, and, because of 
their location in large groups on the immense plantations of the South 

*Gonzales, The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast, p. 15. 





a ee eS ee 





WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 285 


Carolina lowlands, they have remained cut off from contact with the 
white people to a greater extent than the Negroes of any other section 
of the South. 

“Slovenly and careless of speech,” says Gonzales, “these Gullahs 
seized upon the peasant English used by some of the early settlers and 
by the white servants of the wealthier Colonists, wrapped their clumsy 
tongues about it as well as they could, and, enriched with certain ex- 
pressive African words, it issued through their flat noses and thick lips 
as so workable a form of speech that it was gradually adopted by the 
other slaves and became in time the accepted Negro speech of the lower 
districts of South Carolina and Georgia.” ? 

Colonel Charles C. Jones of Georgia in his Myths of the Georgia 
Coast gives some of the “Uncle Remus” and other stories in correct 
Gullah dialect. The work of Colonel Jones contains the most au- 
thentic record we have of Negro myths. The originals of many of the 
“Uncle Remus” stories are found among the Gullah Negroes who rep- 
resent the earliest importation of African slaves. 

Thomas Nelson Page is the outstanding literary exponent of the 
Negro of Virginia. On account of the patriarchal character of slavery 
in Virginia, the relationship between the master and slave in that state 
was often that of mutual tenderness, and beautiful loyalty and affec- 
tion. Mr. Page has pictured for us truthfully the old family servant 
and his relations to his master’s household, but has shown us very little 
of the relations of the Negroes to each other, and leaves out altogether 
the new Negro of the period of emancipation. 

The novels of Tom Dixon are preeminent in their concentration of 
interest on the problem of the Negro. Several of them seem to have 
been written with the view of showing the menace of the Negro 
population, and the justification for the maintenance of white suprem- 
acy. The material for his novels is mostly historical, covering the 
slavery régime, Reconstruction, and the modern era of emancipation. 

The author has a masterful resourcefulness of plot, a felicity of 
diction, and a forcefulness of style which have ensured for his novels 
an extraordinary sale. His Leopard’s Spots and his Clansman have 
attracted the widest interest and provoked the greatest controversy. 
The subject-matter of these novels has been put together in the form 
of drama and converted into a motion picture, under the title of The 
Birth of a Nation, which has had a most phenomenal run. It is a story 
of the Reconstruction rule in the South, and the Negroes and carpet- 

2 Tbid., p. 10. 


286 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





baggers of that period are represented in such a way as to excite the 
deepest repulsion. The spectators of the play are swept along by its 
passionate appeal. They thrill with excitement, burn with indignation, 
and break forth into storms of exaltation and applause when the 
Southern white man triumphs over his brutish oppressors. 

Because of the intense passion which the play arouses, and the be- 
lief that it tends to array the white man against the Negro, a great 
outcry of protest has been raised against its presentation. The Ne- 
groes, especially, have condemned it, and in many cities of the North 
and West its exhibition has been prohibited. It has stirred up the in- 
dignation of a class of people in-the North very much as Uncle Tom's 
Cabin roused the indignation of the Southern slaveholders. 

But whatever one may think of Mr. Dixon’s way of looking at the 
Negro problem, his novels have a value as works of art. They display 
a penetrating insight into human nature, and contain many interesting 
and sympathetic interpretations of Negro character, of which the fol- 
lowing extract from The Leopard's Spots, reprinted by courtesy of the 
publishers, Doubleday and Page Company, is a sample: 


AN EXPERIMENT IN MATRIMONY 


Nelse was informed by the agent of the Freedman’s Bureau when 
summoned before that tribunal that he must pay a fee of one dollar 
for a marriage license and be married over again. 

“What’s dat? Dis yer war bust up me en Eve’s marryin’?”’ 

“Yes,” said the agent. “You must be legally married.” 

Nelse chuckled on a brilliant scheme that flashed through his mind. 

“Den I see you ergin ’bout dat,” he said as he hastily took his leave. 

He made his way homeward revolving his brilliant scheme. 

“But won't I fetch dat nigger Eve down er peg er two! I gwine 
ter make her t’ink I won’ marry her nohow. I make ’er ax my pardon 
fur all dem little disergreements. She got ter talk might putty now, 
sho nuff!” And he smiled over his coming triumph. 

It was four o’clock in the afternoon when he reached his cabin door 
on the lot back of Mrs. Gaston’s home. Eve was busy mending 
clothes for their little boy, now nearly five years old. 

“Good evenin’, Miss Eve!” 

Eve looked up at him with a sudden flash of her eye. 

“What de matter wid you, nigger?” 

“Nuttin’ tall. Des drapped in lak ter pass de time er day, en ax 
how’s you en yer son stanin’ dis hot wedder!” Nelse bowed and smiled. 





WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 287 

“What ail you, you big black baboon?” 

“Nuttin’ tall, Ma’am, des callin’ roun’ ter see my frien’s.” Still 
smiling, Nelse walked in and sat down. 

Eve put down her sewing, stood up before him, her arms akimbo, 
and gazed at him steadily till the whites of her eyes began to shine 
like two moons. 

“You wants me ter whale you ober de head wid dat poker?” 

“Not dis even’, Ma’am.”’ 

“Den what ail you?” 

“De Buro des inform me, dat es I’se er young han’some man en 
you’se er gittin’ kinder ole en fat, dat we ain’t married nohow! En 
dey gimme er paper fur er dollar dat allow me ter marry de young 
lady er my choice! Dat sho is a great Buro!” 

“We ain’t married?” 

“Nob-um.” 

“Atter we stan’ up dar befo’ Marse John Durham en says des 
what all dem white folkes say?” 

“Nob-um.” 

Eve slowly took her seat and gazed down the road thoughtfully. 

“T tink I drap eroun’ ter see you en gin you er chance wid de 
odder gals fo’ I steps off,” explained Nelse with a grin. 

No answer. 

“You ’member dat night I say sumfin’ bout er gal I know once, en 
you riz en grab er poun’ er wool outen my head fo’ I kin move?” 

No answer yet. 

“Min’ dat time you bust de biscuit dobo ober my head, en lam 
me wid de fire-shovel, en hit me in de burr er de year wid er flatiron 
es I was makin’ for de do’?” 

“Yas, I min’s dat sho!” said Eve with evident satisfaction. 

“Doan you wish you nhebber done dat?” 

“You black debbil!’ 

“Dat’s hit! I’se er bad nigger, Ma’am,—bad nigger fo’ de war. 
En I’se gittin’ wuss en wuss,’ Nelse chuckled. 

She looked at him with gathering rage and contempt. 

“En den fudder mo, Ma’am, I doan lak de way you talk ter me 
sometimes. Yo voice des kinder takes de skin off same’s er file. I 
laks ter hear er ’oman’s voice lak my Missy’s, des es sof’ es wool. 
Sometimes one word from her keep me warm all winter. De way you 
talk sometime make me cole in de summer time.” 

Nelse rose while Eve sat motionless. 


288 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“T des call, Ma’am, ter drap er little intment inter dem years er 
yoarn, dat’ll percerlate froo you min’, en when I calls ergin I hopes 
ter be welcome wid smiles.” 

Nelse bowed himself out in grandiloquent style. 

All the afternoon he was laughing to himself over his triumph, and 
imagining the welcome when he returned that evening with his mar- 
riage license and the officer to perform the ceremony. At supper in 
the kitchen he was polite and formal in his manners to Eve. She 
eyed him in a contemptuous sort of way, and never spoke unless it was 
absolutely necessary. 

It was about half past eight when Nelse arrived at home with the 
license duly issued and the officer of the bureau ready to perform the 
ceremony. 

“Des wait er minute here at de corner, sah, twell I kinder breaks 
de news to ’em,” said Nelse to the officer. 

He approached the cabin door and knocked. 

It was shut and fastened. He got no response. 

He knocked loudly again. 

Eve thrust her head out the window. 

“Who’s dat?” 

“THit’s me, Ma’am, Mister Nelson Gaston, I’se call ter see you.” 

“Den you hump yo’se’f en git away from dat do, you rascall.” 

“De Lawd, honey, I’se des been er foolin’ you ter day. I’se got 
dem licenses en de Buro man right out dar now ready ter marry us. 
You know yo ole man nebber gwine back on you—I des been er foolin’.” 

“Den you been er foolin’ wid de wrong nigger!” 

“Lawd, honey, doan keep de bridegroom er waitin’.” 

“Git er away from dat do!” 

“G’long chile, en quit yer projeckin’.” Nelse was using his softest 
and most persuasive tones now. 

“G’way from dat do’!” 

“Come on, Eve, de man waitin’ out dar fur us!” 

“Git away, I tells you, er I scald you wid er kittle er hot water!” 

Nelse drew back slightly from the door. 

“But, honey, whar yo ole man gwine ter sleep?” 

“Dey’s straw in de barn, en pine shatters in de dog house!” she 
shouted slamming the window. 

“Eve, honey !—” 

“Doan you come honeyin’ me, I’se er spec’able ’oman, I is. Ef you 
wants ter marry me you got ter come co’tin’ me in de day time fust, en 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 289 


bring me candy, en ribbons en flowers and sich, en you got ter talk 
purtier’n you ebber talk in all you born days. Lots er likely lookin’ 
niggers come settin’ up ter me while you gone in dat wah, an’ I keep 
studin’ bout you, you big black rascal. Now you got ter hump yo’se’f 
ef you ebber see de inside er dis cabin ergin.” 

Crestfallen Nelse returned to the officer. 

“Wal, sah, deys er kinder hitch in de preceedins.” 

“What's the matter ?” 

“She ‘low I got ter come co’tin’ her fust. En I spec I is.” 

The officer laughed and returned to his home. She made Nelse 
sleep in the barn for three weeks, court her an hour every day, and 
bring her five cents’ worth of red stick candy and a bouquet of flowers 
as a peace offering at every visit. Finally she made him write her a note 
and ask her to take a ride with him. Nelse got Charlie to write it for 
him, and made his own boy carry it to his mother. After three 
weeks of humility and attention to her wishes, she gave her consent, 
and they were duly married again. 


In the novels of James Lane Allen, the Negro does not figure con- 
spicuously, but most of them contain picturesque sketches of Negro 
character. In Two Gentlemen from Kentucky, there are several inter- 
esting Negro types and one of them, Peter, gives the following account 
of his courtship: 

“The colonel was sitting on the stone steps in front of the house, 
and Peter stood below, leaning against a Corinthian column, hat in hand, 
as he went on to tell his love-story. 

“ “Hit all happ’n dis way, Marse Rom. We wuz gwine have pra’r- 
meetin’, en I ‘lowed to walk home wid Phillis en ax ’er on de road. I 
been ’lowin’ to ax ’er heap o’ times befo’, but I ain’t jus’ nuver done so. 
So I says to myse’f, says I, “I jes’ mak my sermon to-night kinder lead 
up to whut I gwine to tell Phillis on de road home.” So I tuk my 
tex’ from de lef’ tail o’ my coat: “De greates’ o’ dese is charity ;” caze 
I knowed charity wuz same ez love. En all de time I wuz preachin’ an’ 
glorifyin’ charity en identifyin’ charity wid love, I couldn’ he’p thinkin’ 
‘bout what I gwine say to Phillis on de road home. Dat mak me feel 
better; en de better I feel, de better I preach, so hit boun’ to mek my 
heahehs feel better likewise—Phillis ’mong um. So Phillis she jes sot 
dah listenin’ en listenin’ en lookin’ like we wuz a’ready on de road home, 
till I got so wuked up in my feelin’s 1 jes knowed de time wuz come. 
By-en-by, I hadn’ mo’n done preachin’ en wuz lookin’ round to git my 


290 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Bible en my hat, ’fo’ up popped dat big Charity Green, who been sittin’ 
‘longside o’ Phillis en takin’ ev’r las’ thin’ I said to herse’f. En she 
tuk hole o’ my han’ en squeeze it, en say she felt mos’ like shoutin’. En’ 
‘fo’ I knowed it, I jes see Phillis wrap ’er shawl roun’ ’er head en tu’n 
"er nose up at me right quick en flip out de dooh. De dogs howl mighty 
mou’nful when I walk home by myse’f dat night,’” added Peter, laugh- 
ing to himself, “‘en I ain’ preach dat sermon no mo’ tell atter me an 
Phillis wuz married. 

““Hit wuz long time,” he continued, “‘’fo’ Phillis come to heah 
me preach any mo’. But ‘long ’bout nex’ fall we had big meetin’, en 
heap mo’ um j’ined. But Phillis, she ain’t nuver j’ined yit. I preached 
mighty nigh all roun’ my coat-tails till, I say to myse’f, “D’ ain’t but 
one tex’ lef’, en I jes got to fetch ’er wid dat!” De tex’ wuz on de right 
tail o’ my coat: “Come unto me, all ye dat labor en is heavy laden.” 
Hit wuz a ve’y momentus sermon, en all ‘long I jes’ see Phillis wras’lin’ 
wid ’erse’f, en I say, “She got to come dis night, de Lohd he’pin me.” 
En I had’n mo’n said de word, ’fo’ she jes walked down en guv me ’er 
han’. 

“Den we had de baptizin’ in Elkhorn Creek, en de watter wuz deep 
en de curren’ tol’ble swif’. Hit look to me like dere wuz five hundred 
uv um on de creek side. By-en-by I stood on de edge o’ de water, en 
Phillis she come down to let me baptize ’er. En me en ’er j’ined han’s 
en waded out in the creek, mighty slow, caze Phillis didn’t have no shot 
roun’ de bottom uv’er dress, en it kep’ bobbin’ on top de watter til I 
pushed it down. But by-en-by we got ’way out in de creek, en bof uv 
us wuz tremblin’, En I says to ’er ve’y kin’ly, “When I put you un’er 
de watter, Phillis, you mus’ try en hole yo’se’f stiff, so I can lif’ you up 
easy.” But I hadn’t mo’ ’n get er laid over de watter ready to souze 
er un’er when ’er feet flew off de bottom uv de creek, en when I retched 
out to fetch ’er up, I stepped in a hole; en ’fo’ I knowed it, we wuz 
flounderin’ roun’ in de watter, en de hymn dey was singin’ on de bank 
sounded mighty confused-like. En Phillis she swallowed some watter, 
en all ’t oncet she jes grap me right tight roun’ de neck, en say mighty 
quick, says she, “I gwine marry whoever gits me out’n dis yere watter!”’ 

“ “En by-en-by, when me en’er wuz walkin’ up de bank o’ de creek, 
drippin’ all over, I says to ’er, says I: 

“Does you ’member what you said back yon’er in de watter, Phillis ?” 

“T ain’ out’n no watter yit,’ says she, ve’y contemptuous. 

“When does you consider yo’se’f out’n de watter?” says I, ve’y 
humble. 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 291 


“When I git dese soakin’ clo’es off’n my back,” says she. 

““Hit wuz good dark when we got home, en atter a while I crope 
up to de dooh o’ Phillis’s cabin en put my eye down to de key-hole, en 
see Phillis jes settin’ *fo’ dem blazin’ walnut logs dressed up in ’er new 
red linsey dress, en’er eyes shinin’. En I shuk so I mos’ faint. Den I 
tap easy on de dooh, en say in a mighty tremblin’ tone, says I: 

“Ts you out’n de watter yit, Phillis?” 

“T got on dry dress,” says she. 

“Does you ’member what you said back yon’r in de watter, Phillis ?” 
says I. 

“De latch-string on de outside de dooh,” says she, mighty sof’. 

““Fn I walked in.’ 

“As Peter drew near the end of this reminiscence, his voice sank to 
a key of inimitable tenderness; and when it was ended he stood a few 
minutes, scraping the gravel with the toe of his boot, his head dropped 
forward. Then he added, huskily: 

“Phillis been dead heap o’ years now,’ and turned away.” 


Sherwood Bonner (Mrs. Edward McDowell), of Mississippi, is the 
author of Dialect Tales, Suwanee River Tales, etcetera, depicting Negro 
character. Her sketch “Gran-mammy”’ is here reprinted by coutesy of 
Little Brown and Company, owners of the copyright: 


GRAN’MAMMY 


In our Southern home we were very fond of our old colored 
mammy, who had petted and scolded and nursed and coddled,—yes, 
and spanked us,—from the time we were born. 

She was not a “black mammy,” for her complexion was the color of 
clear coffee; and we did not call her “mammy,” but “gran’mammy” be- 
cause she had nursed our mother when a delicate little baby,—loving 
her foster child, I believe, more than her own, and loving us for our 
dear mother’s sake. 

She was all tenderness when we were wee toddlers, not more than 
able to clutch at the great gold hoops in her ears, or cling to her ample 
skirts like little burrs; but she showed a sharper side as we grew old 
enough to “bother round the kitchen” with inquisitive eyes and fingers 
and tongues. I regret to say that she sometimes called us “limbs” and 
would wonder with many a groan and shake of her head, how we con- 
trived to hold so much of the Evil One in our small frames. 

“T never seed sich chillern in all my born days,” she cried one day, 


292 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


when Ruth interrupted her in the midst of custard-making, to beg leave 
to get into the kettle of boiling soap that she might be clean once for 
all, and never need another bath; while Sam, on the other side, en- 
treated that she would make three “points” of gravy with the fried 
chicken for dinner. (Sam always came out strong on pronunciation; 
his very errors leaned to virtue’s side.) 

“T ’clar to gracious,” said poor gran’mammy, “you'll drive de sense 
clean outen my head. How Miss Mary ’xpects me ter git a dinner fit- 
ten fur white folks ter eat, wid you little onruly sinners furever under 
foot, is mo’ dan I kin say. An’ here’s Leah an’ Rachel, my own gran’- 
chillern, a no mo’ use ter me dan two tar babies.” 

She looked very threatening as she shook her rolling-pin at her two 
idle grandchildren. They only grinned in an aggravating way; for to 
them as well as to us, the great wide kitchen, with its roomy fire-place, 
where the back-log glowed and the black kettle sung, was the pleasant- 
est place in the world. 

As gran’mammy grew older, her manner softened; her love was 
less fluctuating. It was she to whom we ran to tell of triumphs and 
sorrows, whose sympathy, ash-cakes and turnover pies never failed us. 
It was she who hung over our sick-beds ; who told us stories more beau- 
tiful than we read in any books; who sang to us old-fashioned hymns of 
praise and faith; and who talked to us with childlike simplicity of the 
God whom she loved. 

During the troubled four years that swept like the hot breath of 
the simoon over our country, she was true to the family. Her love, her 
courage, her faithful work, helped us to bear up under our heavy trials. 
And when the gentle mother whose life had been set to such 
sweet music that her spirit broke in the discords of dreadful war, sank 
out of life, it was in gran’mammy’s arms that she died, and neither 
husband nor children mourned more tenderly for the beautiful life cut 
short. 

*k * k 

There was a hawthorn hedge around the place, and looking through 
its interstices I saw a soldier in gray coming toward the gate. The sun 
was in my eyes, and the first thing I noticed about him was that he was 
extremely ragged. Then I saw that he had a long tawny beard, the like 
of which I had never seen before. 

As he drew nearer, his face seemed familiar; those honest blue 
eyes—what! Did my own eyes deceive me? Could it be? 

“O God of all mercies!’ breathed, rather than spoke, dear gran’- 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 293 


mammy, sinking to her knees, and stretching out her arms to the com- 
ing figure. 

The next moment doubt was at rest. Strong arms fairly lifted me 
from my feet and caught me to our dear soldier’s breast; and a voice 
we had thought forever hushed cried out merrily, “Why, my little coz, 
how tall you have grown!” 

It was the old familiar voice of Allan Edmandson. I have always 
been proud that I neither screamed nor fainted; but I clung to him with 
such a white frightened face, that he became alarmed. 

“My mother! is she well?” 

“Yes! yes!” I gasped, “but we heard you were killed.”’ 

“T was left for dead on the field,” he said gravely; “but a Northern 
soldier picked me up, and saved my life, though his comrades insisted 
that I was dead and should be left where I had fallen. I was sent to 
the hospital, exchanged as soon as I was well, got a furlough from my 
colonel, and here I am, only needing a little petting to set me up again.” 

“O Allan! do not waste another minute. Come quickly to poor aunt 
Sarah!” But gran’mammy laid a hand on Allan’s arm. 

“Stop, honey, stop; Miss Katie, you forgit. Don’t you know dat joy 
itse’f is sometimes more dan a breakin’ heart kin bear? Mis’ Sarah is 
mighty frail, an’ she mus’ be made ready to meet dis shock, for dis is 
jes’ as much a shock as de lie dat struck her down. Blessed be de Lord 
for sendin’ de last so quick on de heels of de fust. Now, Miss Katie, 
you jes’ take Mars’ Allan in de house an’ tell your ma to give him some 
coffee an’ hoe-cake right away ter put a little color in his po’ cheeks, 
an’ I'll go upstairs, an’ break de news ter Mis’ Sarah. Now, whatever 
you do, Mars’ Allan, don’t come up till I say de words.” 

She hurried away, and Allan and I followed more slowly, for he was 
still very weak. After seeing the joyful meeting with my mother and 
the rest of the family, I left the excited group that surrounded the re- 
turned soldier, and slipped upstairs to learn how gran’mammy was 
breaking the news. 

Aunt Sarah’s door was ajar. She was seated by the fire in an atti- 
tude of utter dejection. Gran’mammy was bustling about the room, an 
expression of perplexity on her dear old brown face. Presently with a 
sidelong glance at poor Aunt Sarah, gran’mammy began to sing softly. 
I had never heard her croon anything but Methodist hymns. Now, to 
my surprise, she broke forth in a chant that Miss Rose was very fond 
of singing with us after vesper service Sunday afternoon: “Praise 
de Lord, O my soul! O my soul! and forget not all his benefits.” 


294 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


At first Aunt Sarah took no notice; but, at a louder, more vigorous, 
“Praise de Lord, Praise de Lord!’ she shook her head, as if a gnat was 
buzzing about her ears, and looked at the singer with a dull look of sur- 
prise in her weary eyes. 

“Gran’mammy singing!” she said, in a faint voice. 

Gran’mammy came and stood directly in front of my aunt. She 
tried to laugh, but the tears tumbled out of her eyes so fast that she 
choked in the effort to swallow them. 

“Why, yes, Mis’ Sarah,” she at last managed to say; “when my heart 
is light with thinkin’ of de goodness of de Lord I can no mo’ help singin’ 
dan if I was a saint in heaven worshippin’ at de throne.” 

“The goodness of God!” echoed Aunt Sarah, drearily; “He has 
forgotten mercy; He has turned His face from me; He has left me 
desolate and forsaken in my old age.” 

“De Lord never forgits,’ said gran’mammy, solemnly; “an’ He 
never fails to keep de promises He has made. Lean on me, Miss Sarah. 
Rest yo’ po’ tired head. Speak de name of yo’ boy. It’ll do yer good 
to talk about him.” 

“No, no, no!’ said Aunt Sarah, shrinking back; “I thought you 
loved him, gran’mammy, but you could come to my room and sing. Go 
away, I do not want you.” 

“T’ll go, Mis’ Sarah, in one little minute. Love Mars’ Allan? Why, 
wusn’t my arms de fust ter hol’ him—a little soft, helpless innocent— 
even before you held him to yo’ own mother’s heart? An’ from that 
very minute I loved him. I kin see him now, a little white-headed boy, 
always runnin’ ter his ole gran’mammy fur turn-overs an’ ginger-cakes. 
Heven’t I watched him all through de years, growin’ as straight an’ tall 
as a young poplar, full of his jokes, but with never a mean streak in 
him, bless de Lord! An’ den, Miss Sarah, don’t you mind how he 
looked in his gray uniform, wid de gold lace on his sleeves ; an’ how his 
eyes would kindle an’ his voice ring out when he talked of de country 
he loved next to God?” 

“Gran’mammy! do you want to break my heart? Why do you tor- 
ture me?’ And Aunt Sarah burst into such wild, wild tears that I was 
frightened. | 

“Oh! my po’ sweet mistis, I wants to mend yo’ heart, not break it ;” 

and gran’mammy, too, burst into tears, kneeling now by Aunt Sarah 
with her arms around her. “I wants you to call ter mind jes’ 
one thing—de commandment given by de Lord to His people, given wid 
a promise, Kin you say it over ter me?” 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 295 


“Honor thy father and thy mother,” said Aunt Sarah, like one in a 
dream, “and thy days shall be long in the land—’’ 

“Stop dar Mis’ Sarah,—stop at dat promise,’ almost shouted gran’- 
mammy. ‘Did Mars’ Allan honor his father an’ his mother ?” 

“Always! Always! He never disobeyed us in his life. No son 
could have been better or nobler.” 

“And thy days shall be long in the land,” cried gran’mammy, “which 
the Lord thy God giveth thee! Now, Miss Sarah, jes’ trust God. He 
won't break dat promise.” 

Words cannot do justice to the solemnity, the yearning tenderness, 
the pathetic earnestness, that made the dear old woman like one in- 
spired. Wave after wave of feeling rolled over her face. I do not 
know how to express it—but a sacred, even a religious rapture seemed 
to hold her in its possession. Strong feeling had exalted her. I felt 
as if I should like to steal in and pray beside her. She still knelt, but 
she kept her arms clasped about the frail figure in the arm-chair. 

Wild, vague suspicions were evidently forming in Aunt Sarah’s 
mind. She looked at gran’mammy—a piteous, agonizing gaze. But 
gran’mammy’s eyes met hers with steady joy. 

“What do you mean?” she gasped huskily. “In God’s name, what 
do you mean?” 

“T mean,—lean on me, dear, lean on me,—I mean dat if our blessed 
Lord wuz on earth to-day, an’ we could kneel at his feet askin’ de life 
of our boy, he could give it ter us. For Allan’s grave has not been 
dug, an’ Allan’s livin’, not dead to-day.” 

“What have you heard?” 

“A messenger has come.” 

Then I saw a transformation. Aunt Sarah sprang up, the color and 
light flashing into her cheeks and eyes, the vigor and erectness of youth 
restored to her shrunken and bowed figure. No longer a haggard old 
woman,—like a girl she threw open the door, and swept past me with- 
out a word. 


Armistead C. Gordon of Virginia, who occupies a high rank as a 
Southern poet, essayist, and fiction writer, is very clever in handling 
Negro dialect, of which the following is a specimen: 


ENVION 


Reg’lar ole time F. F. V.’s dey was—fus’ famblys, ye knew—wid 
day hansum kerridges an’ fat black niggers a-settin’ up on de boxes an’ 


296 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


a-grinnin’ foreber; case dey got so much ter eat. I told ye! An’ de 
way ole Cunnel Toliver’d move ’roun’ ’mongst de company, a-bowin’ 
here an’ a-scrapin’ dar, an’ a-sayin’ ter all on ’em: “I’m mos’ happy 
ter have ye here on dis mos’ suspeceous occasion!” 

An’ den de supper, an’ de dancin’. ’Twarn’t none o’ yer 10 o’clock 
in de mornin’ go-way on de half pas’ ten train sort o’ weddin’s dat my 
young marster got married at. Big supper, dance all night, an’ de whole 
crowd stayin’ dar sebrel days. Table fa’rly loaded down wid ev’rything 
ye could think of—Ole Ferginyer ham, ole Ferginyer turkey, ole Fer- 
ginyer cured ven’son, ole Glorster Pint oysters, an’ ole Ferginyer moun- 
tain-dew f’om beyant de Blue Ridge; an’ wine an’ egg-nogg ’twel you 
cudden’ hole yer bref. An’ evy now an’ den de ole Cunnel sed: 

‘“Gennulmen, jine me!” an’ dey’d step up ter de long “hog-any side- 
board whar de silver chewreens an’things was stacked an’ dey’d mix de 
peach an’ honey, an’ bow ter one another an’ say: “My ree-gards, 
gennulmen!” an’ drink it off, while de niggers stan’in’ aroun’ wid dey 
white ap’uns on ter wait on de table’d feel dey moufs fa’rly waterin.’ 
Den come de dancin’—none of yer new-fangled brass ban’ Garmins, but 
de reg’lar ole time swing-cornders; an’ de whole thing windin’ up wid 
a ole Ferginyer Reel. An’ Pompey Rowan was de boss fiddler, wid 
two mo’ o’ dem Tide-water niggers—young ’uns, ye know. Dey’s an 
orful perlite set, dem darkeys, down ’bout Glo’rster Pint—reg’lar ‘ris- 
tercratic niggers dat knows what’s what. Come o’ dey ’vocations, I 
‘spec’. An’ fiddle—Lord, you jes oughter heerd dem three niggers 
slingin’ o’ de bow. De pictures on de walls looked like dey was gwine 
ter step down outer dey frames an’ jine dat reel. Eben de preacher 
what morrid de couple, soon arter Pomp struck up, marches ober ter 
de sideboard an’ takes peach an’ honey in his’n wid de Cunnel; an’ de 
fus’ thing I knowed he was jerkin’ ez lively a hoof ez any sinner in dat 
crowd. Well, arter de doin’s was done ended, we come back up here 
ter de mountains, an’ Mars’ Berkeley and Miss Agnes settled down at 
de Grasslane place dat ole Master gin ’em; an’ sech another happy 
couple I never is seed. I stayed in de house an’ waited on de table; 
an’ I watched ’em an’ I think dat dey loved one another about jes de 
same. Dar warn’t much diff’unce. But I notice “bout dis time 
dat Mars’ Berk was eternally an’ foreber comin’ up here ter town ter 
make speeches out dar in front o ’de Co’t "Ouse; an’ down at Grasslane 
he kep’ a-readin’ o’ de newspapers. An’ de fus’ thing I knowed he had 
done got him a calvary company an’ used ter have a drill ev'ry day. An’ 
den one May mornin’—I ree-collects it ez well ez if it was yestiddy— 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 207 


_- 


he come ter me, an’ he sez: ‘“Envion, saddle de hosses an’ git yerse’f 
ready ter go off wif me. De Yankees 1s pas’ de Potomac, an’ my com- 
pany is ordered out.” In two hours everything was ready, an’ de hosses 
a-stannin’ at de do’. De sun was shinin’ ez bright an’ puty ez I ever seen 
it; de green was on de trees good, an’ de willow bushes all along de bank 
o’ de creek in front o’ de house fa’rly sparkled in de light. De cherry 
an’ de apple trees was all in blossom, an’ de birds was a-singin’ like 
dey was gwine ter bus’ deyselves. Yes, sah, de place looked mighty 
beautiful, an’ it did seem a pity-like ter leave it. But the purties’ thing 
o’ it all was young Miss Agnes, dressed up all in white, a-stannin’ dar 
in de porch whar de honeysuckle vines was a-growin’, waitin’ ter see 
Mars’ Berkley mount an’ ride away. 

“T cudden’ let you go, my darlin’, sez she, ez she put her hand on 
his gray coat-sleeve, “but for de fac’ dat I know yer country calls you, 
an ‘tis yer duty. Ez it is, ef you stayed, I cudden’ love you ez I do.” 

An’ den de tears came in her eyes when he put his arms about her— 
an’—an’ I looked away. 

We mounted de hosses an’ rid off ; an’ when we turned in our saddles 
dar she still stood ’neaf de honeysuckles all white and beautiful, a-shad- 
in’ her eyes wid her han’ an watchin’ on us go. 

Dat was de last time dat he ever seen her. Up an’ down, roun’ 
an’ about, Mars’ Berk an’ me carried our cavalry company, a-fightin’ 
an’ a-scrimmagin’ wid de Yankees, an’ a-manoovrin’ roun’ ginnerally. 
Ontwel at last’ dey got us over yander beyo’d Culpepper Co’t ’Ouse at 
dat place dey calls Manassas, whar Gennul Borygard an’ Gennul John- 
son had dissembled all de soljers in de country to whop out de Yankees 
dat was comin’. I mos’ commonly stayed ter de rear an’ tuk keer o’ de 
baggage when de fightin’ was goin’ on; but dat day Mars’ Berk, sez he: 
“Envion, you must come wid me. Mebbe I'll be killed down here ter- 
day, becase it’s gwine ter be a big fight; an’ ef so, dar’s a letter in my 
pocket what I wants tuk back to yer Miss Agnes.” 

So dat day, when de lines o’ infantry was a-deployin’, an’ a-filadin’ 
an’ a-carryin’ on, an’ Mars’ Berk was a-settin’ dar on his horse wid his 
drawed sabre up agin his shoulder, in front o’ his company, I was right 
by him. An den de bugles sounded all on a sudden, an’ Mars’ Berk 
said “Charge!” Right down on de Yankees in front of us we rid, wid 
de hosses a-snortin’ an’ de bright swords a-shinin’ in de sunlight. It 
would ha’ looked awful purty, ef I hadn’t been so skeered. I thought 
to myself: “Nigger, yer time’s come now, sho!” but I rid right on wid 
em, close ter Mars Berkley. We charged again de Yankee ranks, an’ 


298 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


our hosses ez we met ’em, come up on dey haunches. De way de pistols 
was a’goin’ pop! pop! pop! was a caution; an’ sich another yellin’ an 
a-Swearin’ an a-cussin’ an’ rattlin’ 0’ swords an’ scabbards an’ tin can- 
teens I never heerd in all o’ my born days. But Mars’ Berk never said 
-a word. He rid right on silent, wid his sabre a-fallin’ right an’ lef’ 
*twel all on a sudden I seed de sword sorter quiver—’case I was awatch- 
in’ on him all de time—an’ den he flung bofe arms up in de a’r, an’ 
rolled over ter one side. 

“My Gord, for Miss Agnes!” sez I; an’ I cotch him in my arms, an’ 
draggin’ him off’n his hoss ter mine I rid out o’ dat bloody mix wid him 
ter de rear. A bullet tuk me in-de shoulder ;—ef my shirt was off, you 
could see de mark dar now, sah—but I didn’t never stop for dat. I ker- 
ried him out o’ de reach o’ dem whistlin’ bullets, an’ laid him down on 
de groun’ ez sof’ like ez I could. He groaned an’ said sumpin’ bout 
Miss Agnes, an’ den a sort o’ gugglin’ soun’ kim in his throat; an’ I 
knowed dat dat was de las’ on him. I retch down inter his breas’ pocket 
whar he had tole me de letter was, an’ I tuk it out. Dar was a lot o’ 
blood on one cornder of it; but I put it in my pocket ter take ter my 
young Mistis jes so. I buried him dar dat night on dat fiel’. I dug his 
grave wid my own han’s, an’ I laid him away without coffin or sheet; 
but I put a big rock over de place so dat I would know whar ter find 
him when Miss Agnes sent me arter him again. 

An’ den, widout sayin’ nothin’ ter Gennul Borygard or Gennul 
Johnson, widout no passport or nothin’, I sot out for home wid dat 
letter. I never shall forgit ontwel my dyin’ day de look on Miss Agnes’ 
face when she seen me a-slowly comin’ up over de bridge, across de 
meadow creek an’ through de big front gate. She stood on de porch 
a-lookin’ out, like she looked dat May mornin’ when we left her; an’ 
at fus’ she started to’ds me. Den I see her sort o’ ketch at de pillar by 
her side; an’ when I had got dar her face was whiter dan Mars’ Berke- 
ley’s was when de death grip was on him; an’ she sort o’ gasped out at 
me: 

“Envion, is he dead ?”’ 

I did’n say a word—I cudden’; but she seen it in my eyes. An’ wid 
a sort o’ low cry dat cut through me sharper’n a knife, an’ made me for- 
git all about dat bullet in my back, she sort o’ staggered an’ fell for- 
ruds. I cotch her in my arms an’ tuk her in. 

I ain’t nothin’ but a poor good-for-nothin’ nigger; but it does me 
some good ter remember dat I fit in de battle ‘long side o’ de braves’ 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 299 


man dat was in dat wah; an’ dat when I come back I tuk keer 0’ young 
Miss Agnes.” ° 


John Charles McNeill, a promising young poet of North Carolina, 
whose career was lamentably ended at the age of thirty-three, wrote 
many charming little poems in which the Negro figured in a variety of 
aspects. Two of them follow: 


"POSSUM TIME AGAIN 


Oh, dip some ’taters down in grease 
En fling de dogs a ’tater apiece. 
Ram yo’ brogans clean er tacks, 
Split de splinters en fetch de ax. 
It’s ‘possum time again! 


Catfish tender, catfish tough, 

We ’s done et catfish long enough. 

We ’s tar’d er collards en white-side meat, 

En we ’s gwine have supp’n’ wut ’is good to eat. 
It ’s ‘possum time again! 


De pot ’s gwine simmer en blubber en bile 

Till it gits scummed over wid possum ile. 

But le’ ’s don’t brag till we gits de goods. 

Whoop! Come along, boys! Wes off to de woods. 
It ’s ’possum time again! * 


MR. NIGGER 


How could we do without you, 
Mr. Nigger? 
Could we not talk about you, 
Mr. Nigger, 
We'd have to quit our politics, 
’T would put our papers in a fix, 
We'd have to start and learn new tricks, 
Mr. Nigger. 


Ah, ragtime would be sadly misst, 

Mr. Nigger! 
There ’d be no elocutionist, 

Mr. Nigger. 
The Coon-song’s flow would then be checked, 
The minstrel show would soon be wrecked 
And writers of your dialect, 

Mr. Nigger. 


*From Library of Southern Literature. 
*McNeill, Lyrics from Cotton Land, p. 55. 


300 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





I cannot see, if you were dead, 
Mr. Nigger, 
How orators could earn their bread, 
Mr. Nigger; 
For they could never hold the crowd 
Save they abused you long and loud 
As being a dark and threatening cloud, 
Mr. Nigger. 


But plough my land and barn my crop, 
Mr. Nigger. 
I’ll furnish sorghum for your sop, 
Mr. Nigger. 
And see you earn your money’s worth, 
Else, when dull times possess the earth, 
I’ll burn you to excite the North, 
Mr. Nigger. 


You’re a vast problem to our hand, 
Mr. Nigger. 

Your fame is gone throughout the land, 
Mr. Nigger. 

The heart of all this mighty nation 

Is set to work out your salvation, 

But don’t you fear expatriation, 
Mr. Nigger.® 


Irwin Russell, a native of Mississippi, is the author of numerous 
poems, of which several deal with Negro character in Negro dialect. 
One of his best dialect poems is the following: 


MAHSR JOHN 


I heahs a heap o’ people talkin’, ebrywhar I goes, 

"Bout Washingtum an’ Franklum, an’ sech gen’uses as dose; 
I s’pose dey’s mighty fine, but heah’s de pint I’s bettin’ on: 
Dere wuzn’t nar a one ob ’em come up to Mahsr John. 


He shorely wuz de greates’ man de country ebber growed. 

You better had git out de way when he comes ‘long de road! 

He hel’ his head up dis way, like he ’spised to see de groun’; 
An’ niggers had to toe de mark when Mahsr John wuz roun’, 


I only has to shet my eyes, an’ den it seems to me 

I sees him right afore me now, jes like he use’ to be, 

A-setting on de gal’ry, lookin’ awful big an’ wise, 

Wid little niggers fannin’ him to keep away de flies, 
°McNeill, op, cit., pp. 1-3. 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 301 





He alluz wore de berry bes’ ob planters’ linen suits, 

An’ kep’ a nigger busy jes’ a-blackin’ ob his boots; 

De buckles on his galluses wuz made ob solid gol’, 

An’ diamon’s!—dey wuz in his shu’t as thick as it would hol’. 


You heered me! ’twas a caution, when he went to take a ride, 
To see him in de kerridge, wid ol’ Mistis by his side— 
Mulatter Bill a-dribin’, an’ a nigger on behin’, 

An’ two Kaintucky hosses tuk ’em tearin’ whar dey gwine. 


OY Mahsr John wuz pow’ful rich—he owned a heap o’ lan’: 
Fibe cotton places, ’sides a sugar place in Loozyar’ ; 

He had a thousan’ niggers—an’ he wuked ’em shore’s you born! 
De oberseahs ’u’d start ’em at de breakin’ ob de morn. 


I reckon dere wuz forty ob de niggers, young an’ ol’, 

Dat staid about de big house jes to do what dey wuz tol’; 
Dey had a’ easy time, wid skacely any work at all— 

But dey had to come a’runnin’ when ol’ Mahsr John ’wd call! 


Sometimes he’d gib a frolic—dat’s de time you seed de fun: 

De ’ristocratic fam’lies, dey ’u’d be dar, ebry one; 

Dey’d hab a band from New Orleans to play for ’em to dance, 
An’ tell you what, de supper wuz a’tic’lar sarcumstance. 


Well, times is changed. De war it come an’ sot de niggers free, 
An’ now ol’ Mahsr John ain’t hardly wuf as much as me; 

He had to pay his debts, an’ so his lan’ is mos’ly gone— 

An’ I declar’ I’s sorry fur my pore ol’ Mahsr John. 


But when I heahs ’em talkin’ ’bout some sullybrated man, 
I listens to ’em quiet, till dey done said all dey can. 

An’ den I ’lows dot in dem days ’at I remembers on, 
Dat gemman warn’t a patchin’ onto my ol’ Mahsr John! 


Mary Johnston is the authoress of a novel, The Slave Ship, which 
describes life in Colonial Virginia, and the transportation of Negroes to 
America. 

Black Cameos, by R. Emmet Kennedy, presents the life of the Lou- 
isiana Negro, in prose, poetry, and song. 

O. Henry gives us an interesting Negro story in his Uncle Bushrod. 

Among the more recent novels dealing with the Negro are the fol- 
lowing: 

Mister Fish Kelly, by Robert McBlair, portraying a shiftless, lazy 
but likable Negro in the South; 

Green Thursday, by Julia Peterkin, describing the life of the Negro 
tenant farmer ; 


302 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


White Blood, by Vara A. Majette, portraying Negro life in the tur- 
pentine region of Georgia; 

White and Black, by Herbert A. Shands, a realistic story of the race 
problem in Texas; 

The Land of Cotton, by Dorothy Scarborough, the story of poor 
whites and blacks in the cotton belt. 

Nigger, by Clement Wood, depicting the history of a Negro family 
in its migration from rural Alabama to Birmingham; 

Dark Days and Black Knights and Sun Clouds, by Octavius R. 
Cohen, are books of short stories exhibiting the humorous aspects of 
Negro life. 

Robert L. Durham’s Call of the South is the story of a President of 
the United States whose social equality theory and practice result in the 
marriage of his daughter to a cultured mulatto. The story culminates 
in a harrowing tragedy. It is well written and has had a sensational 
run, eliciting much favorable and unfavorable comment. 

Among Southern poets, it is very singular that the two most noted, 
Edgar Allan Poe and Sidney Lanier, scarcely mention the Negro. The 
Negro is also conspicuously absent from the works of several of the 
South’s most famous novelists, for example, John Fox, Mrs. Craddock, 
Lucy Furman, and Corra Harris. These authors seem to have chosen 
as the characters they would portray the Appalachian Mountaineers, 
who inhabit regions where there are none or very few Negroes. 

Professor W. B. Smith of Tulane University published in 1906 a 
book, The Color Line, in which he argues, upon anthropological 
grounds, that the Negro is an inferior race with little to hope for in the 
future. It is written in a scholarly and brilliant style, but has not been 
favorably received because of its pessimistic note. 

White America, by Ernest L. Cox, is a brief for maintaining the 
purity of the white race. 

Edgar Gardner Murphey, of Arkansas, is the author of two books 
which deal very extensively with Negro problems: The Present South, 
1904; and The Basis of Ascendency, 1909. His discussions are con- 
structive and his attitude towards the Negro is sympathetic. His books 
have been widely read and very favorably reviewed by both the South- 
ern and Northern press. 

Dr. W. D. Weatherford, president of the Southern College of the 
Young Men’s Christian Association of Nashville, Tennessee, is the 
author of Present Forces in Negro Progress, Negro Life in the South, 
and more recently The Negro From Africa to America, 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 303 


His books deal with the Negro problem from the standpoint of the 
principles of Christianity. He manifests throughout his writings a 
fairness and friendliness toward the Negro. He looks at the facts with 
frankness, and endeavors to bring the white people to a better under- 
standing of the Negro, and to a fuller responsibility in raising the level 
of the Negro’s status. His book, The Negro From Africa to America, 
is unsurpassed as a condensed history of the Negro in America, and it 
contains the best presentation of the social aspects of the Negro prob- 
lem to be found in any single volume. Dr. Weatherford’s books are 
used as texts by thousands of students in the voluntary study classes 
of the Young Men’s Christian Associations, and in colleges and uni- 
versities giving courses on the racial problem. 

Mrs. L. H. Hammond is author of a book, Jn Black and White, 
which approaches the Negro problem with rare insight, sympathy, and 
frankness, and which contains much in the way of hopeful and helpful 
suggestions. Commenting upon her book, the Outlook says: “Mrs. 
Hammond is a southerner who has an intimate knowledge of working 
class conditions, both North and South, and she makes the keynote of 
her book the assertion that the Negro problem is primarily not a Negro 
problem at all but a poverty problem, and that the colored people have 
suffered grave injustice from the failure of the South to understand 
this fact. 

“The book deals therefore with poverty among the Negroes and its 
amelioration—with health, housing, delinquency, education, civil rights. 
It speaks in gentle but no uncertain terms of the Negro’s helpless posi- 
tion and the injustice he often experiences. Examples are given of re- 
fined colored women who have been forced into jim-crow cars and ob- 
liged for hours to hear filthy language amid filthy surroundings; of 
colored boys sent to the chain gang for ten and fifteen years for the 
commission of petty offenses; and of educated, industrious Negro fam- 
ilies forced, because of segregation, to bring up their children on streets 
where vice is permitted to traffic unrestrained.” 

A very scholarly, intellectual, and frank discussion of the Negro 
problem is that of John Moffat Mecklin, in his Democracy and Race 
Friction: A Study in Social Ethics. The author is a native of Mis- 
sissippi, and is now professor of philosophy in the University of Pitts- 
burgh. He takes the ground that the friction between the Negro and the 
white man in our democracy is inevitable and ineradicable, and that the 
only good to come out of a discussion of the problem is to arrive at a 
modus vivendt. 


304. THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“There are certain problems,” he says, “which from their very na- 
ture do not admit of a categorical solution. They are as perennial as 
human existence itself. The real meaning of life is found in frankly 
acknowledging them and in bravely facing the duties to which this ac- 
knowledgment gives rise. It is only the dogmatic philosopher or the 
orthodox theologian who presents us with final solutions and then con- 
tentedly takes an intellectual and moral holiday. For the masses of 
men life is largely a compromise with insuperable difficulties, a persis- 
tent and courageous struggle for a modus vivendi,” © 

Professor Mecklin’s book discusses in separate chapters, the “Basis 
of Social Solidarity,” “Race Traits,’ the “Negro and His Social Heri- 
tage,” “Race Prejudice,” “The Philosophy of the Color Line,” “Creat- 
ing a Conscience,” “The Negro and the Supreme Court,” and “Equality 
before the Law.” 

In his chapter on “Race Prejudice,” he makes the following com- 
ment: “In an enlightened and self-conscious community there is a very 
important sense in which the group mind is consciously reflected in the 
choices individuals express in the marriage relation. The group mind 
of the primitive man was only vaguely aware of the intent to conserve 
the group type, and with it the basis of the group culture, in its insis- 
tence upon the observance of custom and taboo in regard to marriage. 
In modern society, where there is a much clearer apprehension of the 
interests involved, the powerful influence of public sentiment, expressed 
indeed in conventions and social habits and yet distinctly aware of its 
purpose, is everywhere in evidence controlling the choices of the con- 
tracting parties. Society recognises that the interests and inclinations 
of the parties immediately concerned should be subordinated to the 
larger interests of the group. It is distinctly aware of the fundamental 
importance, for the welfare and continued existence of the group’s life, 
of conserving the hereditary racial basis which is the bearer of the group 
culture. The social condemnation of the union of whites and negroes 
is a manifestation of this demand that group integrity be preserved. 
Such an intermingling of blood implies a vast deal more than the union 
of the two persons concerned. It would inevitably bring in time a pro- 
found modification of the cultural ideals of the white through the re- 
sulting transformation of the ethnic background of those ideals. The 
loss of this ‘self-conscious ethnic personality, this self-poised psycho- 
physical entity, which makes a civilisation possible, would be a serious 
disaster. 


*Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction: A Study in Social Ethics, p. vii, 


WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN WHITES 305 


“Hence prejudice against colour may in its lasi analysis be prompted 
by laudable instincts of group self-preservation. Race-friction may be 
.due to an inevitable conflict between group values as they find concrete 
embodiment in two diverse races. Where races differ so greatly that 
the result of amalgamation is neither the one type nor the other, but a 
confusion of the two, the race that has the most at stake resists it as 
meaning ultimately the dissipation of its cultural identity and the cheap- 
ening of all that makes its future worth living for. It is no accident of 
history that mongrel peoples are almost always characterized by insta- 
bility of political institutions and a general inchoateness of civilisation. 

“It is certain, then, that there is much inarticulate wisdom in the 
race antipathy which the uncritical humanitarian would class with the 
fear of mice and rats. To be sure, it often seems stubbornly irrational 
and even flagrantly undemocratic. A young white woman, a graduate 
of a great university of the far North, where negroes are seldom seen, 
resented it most indignantly when she was threatened with social ostra- 
cism in a city farther South with a large negro population because she 
insisted upon receiving on terms of social equality a negro man who 
was her classmate. The logic of the social mind in this case was some- 
thing as follows: When society permits the free social intercourse of 
two young persons of similar training and interests, it tactitly gives its 
consent to the possible legitimate results of such relations, namely, mar- 
riage. But marriage is not a matter that concerns the contracting par- 
ties alone; it is social in its origin and from society come its sanctions. 
It is society’s legitimised method for the perpetuation of the race in the 
larger and inclusive sense of a continuous racial type which shall be 
the bearer of a continuous and progressive civilisation. There are, 
however, within the community two racial groups of such widely di- 
vergent physical and psychic characteristics that the blending of the 
two destroys the purity of the type of both and introduces confusion— 
the result of the blend is a mongrel. The preservation of the unbroken, 
self-conscious existence of the white or dominant ethnic group is 
synonymous with the preservation of all that has meaning and inspira- 
tion in its past and hope for its future. It forbids by law, therefore, 
or by the equally effective social taboo, anything that would tend to con- 
taminate the purity of its stock or jeopardize the integrity of its social 
heritage. 

“The presence of a large element with more or less mixed blood 
cannot be taken as proof that the basis of this race antipathy is es- 
sentially superficial, for this intermingling has taken place in direct 


306 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


opposition to the social sanctions of both groups. The impulses that 
have brought about this fusion are not essentially different from 
those exhibited in the mating of animals of different breeds. They 
cannot be cited against a legitimate race antipathy and in favour of 
race amalgamation, unless, of course, we are prepared to place the 
sanctions of human society on the same level with that of the brutes. 
It is one of the curious illustrations of the mental distortion aroused 
by the discussion of this vexed race-question that writers often seem 
inclined to find in these evidences of the triumph of the animal in 
both races a rational justification for race fusion. The ultimate 
issue at stake is not altered by the fact that in this clandestine fashion 
white blood has found its way into the veins of a few illustrious in- 
dividuals, classed as negroes, but in reality belonging to neither ethnic 
group. 

“The fundamental incompatibilities of racial temperament and tradi- 
tion which operate to make the great majority of actual unions be- 
tween the two groups unhappy and the fact that many of those who 
do enter upon these unions belong to the criminal or anti-social ele- 
ment of both groups would seem to indicate that the condemnation 
of such unions by the better elements of both races has a substantial 
basis.” 7 

Dr. Thomas J. Woofter, member of the Commission on Inter-racial 
Cooperation, is the author of The Basis of Racial Adjustment, which is 
designed for use as a text in classes for the study of race problems. 
The book aims to lead the student to view the problems from the stand- 
point of the best sources, and not to impose the author’s bias. At the 
end of each chapter sources are cited from both Negro and white 
authorities. 


" Mecklin, op. cit., pp. 145-9. 


CHAPTER 309 
NEGRO POETS 


Paul Laurence Dunbar—Claude McKay—James Weldon Johnson—Means, Haw- 
kins, Corrothers, and Fenton Johnson—Recent Tendencies in Negro Poetry— 
The Tragedy of the Mulattoes Revealed in Poetry 


MONG the Negro writers of poetry the name of Paul Laurence 

Dunbar stands out as preéminent. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, 
in 1872. After receiving a high school education he began to earn 
his living as an elevator boy at a salary of $4 a week. In 1893 he 
was appointed by Fred Douglass as assistant in the care of the exhibit 
from Haiti at the World’s Fair. 

Dunbar began to write verses when he was in high school, and by 
the time he had entered upon his duties at the World’s Fair he had 
written a number of clever poems and had attracted some attention 
as a reader of them. In 1893 a collection of his poems was published 
under the title of Oak and Ivy, and in 1895 a second collection ap- 
peared under the title of Majors and Minors. These poems caught 
the eye of William Dean Howells, who wrote a favorable review of 
them for Harper’s Weekly. Thereafter Dunbar was well known to 
students of current literature, and his suceeding publications found 
a wide and appreciative circle of readers. Among his later publica- 
tions were Lyrics of Lowly Life, Lyrics of the Hearthstone, Poems 
of Cabin and Field, etcetera. 

His merit as a poet consisted in his faithful delineation of the life 
of the Negro in its humble and picturesque setting, with a fine touch 
of humor and pathos, and an artful use of dialect. His reputation 
was enhanced by his visit to England in 1897, on which he won recog- 
nition in literary circles. Upon his return to America, at the age 
of twenty-six, he was able to devote himself entirely tc his literary 
compositions and to public readings. But, just as he was entering 
into the flowering period of his career, his health began to fail. In- 
ability to carry on his literary work was necessarily followed by finan- 
cial embarrassment. Through the influence of Robert G. Ingersoll, 
he was appointed to a position in the Library of Congress, but was 

397 


308 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


obliged to give up this work after a few months owing to the bad 
effect of the confinement upon his health. After a vain search for 
health in Colorado, he returned to his home at Dayton, where he died 
February 9, 1906. 

Dunbar’s achievement as a poet was, indeed, remarkable for a 
man whose span of life covered only thirty-four years. But he was 
richly endowed by nature—a real poetic genius. He had the poet’s 
imagination and delicacy of feeling and these found expression through 
the medium of a refined literary taste and felicity of language. One 
of his most beautiful poems is “The Deserted Plantation” in which 
he shows his ability to see and.interpret the finer aspects of the ante- 
bellum South: 


“Oh, de grubbin’-hoe’s a-rustin’ in de co’nah, 
An’ de plow’s a-tumblin’ down in de fiel’, 

While de whippo-will’s a’wailin’ lak a mou’nah 
When his stubbo’n hea’t is tryin’ ha’d to yiel’. 


“In de furrers whah de co’n was allus wavin’, 
Now de weeds is growin’ green an’ rank an’ tall; 
An’ de swallers roun’ de whole place is a-bravin’ 
Lek dey thought deir folks had allus owned it all. 


“An’ de big house stan’s all quiet lak’ an’ solemn, 
Not a blessed soul in pa’lor, po’ch, er lawn; 
Not a guest, ner not a cai’age lef’ to haul ’em, 
Fu’ de ones dat tu’ned de latch-string out air gone. 


“An’ de banjo’s voice is silent in de qua’ters, 

D’ ain’t a hymn ner co’n-song ringin’ in de air; 
But de murmur of a branch’s passin’ waters 

Is de only soun’ dat breks de stillness dere. 


“Whah’s de da’kies, dem dat used to be a-dancin’ 
Ev’ry night befo’ de ole cabin do’? 

Whah’s de chillun, dem dat used to be a-prancin’ 
Er a-rollin’ in de san’ er on de flo’? 


“Whah’s ole Uncle Mordecai an’ Uncle Aaron? 
Whah’s Aunt Doshy, Sam, an’ Kit, an’ all de res’? 

Whah’s ole Tome de da’ky fiddlah, how’s he farin’? 
Whah’s de gals dat used to sing an’ dance de bes’? 


“Gone! not one o’ dem is lef’ to tell de story; 
Dey have lef’ de deah ole place to fall away. 

Couldn’t one o’ dem dat seed it in its glory 
Stay to watch it in de hour of decay? 


NEGRO POETS 309 





“Dey have lef’ de ole plantation to de swallers, 
But it hol’s in me a lover till de las’; 
Fu’ I fin’ hyeah in de memory dat follers 

All dat loved me an’ dat I loved in de pas’. 


“So I’ll stay an’ watch de deah ole place an’ tend it 
Ez I used to in de happy days gone by. 

’T well de othah Mastah thinks it’s time to end it, 
An’ calls me to my qua’ters in de sky.” 


His poem, “Sympathy,” is an introspection and expresses the loneli- 
ness and circumscribed life of the latter-day cultured and aspiring 
Negro. 

SYMPATHY 


I know what the caged bird feels, alas! 
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; 
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, 
And the river flows like a stream of glass; 
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, 
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— 
I know what the caged bird feels! 


I know why the caged bird beats his wing 
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars: 

For he must fly back to his perch and cling 

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; 
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars 

And they pulse again with a keener sting— 

I know why he beats his wing! 


I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, 

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— 
When he beats his bars and he would be free; 
It is not a carol of joy or glee, 

But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, 
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— 
I know why the caged bird sings! 


Another of Dunbar’s lyrics is “With the Lark.” 


WITH THE LARK 


Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy, 

Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy; 

Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,— 
Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong, 
All the night through, though I moan in the dark, 
I wake in the morning to sing with the lark, 


310 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves, 

Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves. 

But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky, 

I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry; 

And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark, 
I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark. 


On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be, 

Where the rain shall not grieve thro’ the leaves of the tree, 
There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known, 

For my hand will be clasped in the hand of mine own; 

And though life has been hard and death’s pathway been dark, 
I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark. 


Claude McKay, a native of Jamaica, who has taken up residence 
in New York City, is the author of a number of poems conspicuous 
for versatility and imaginative insight. His first poems were written 
while he was on the constabulary force of Jamaica, and were pub- 
lished under the title Constab Ballads. His second volume came out 
in England under the title Spring in New Hampshire, with a preface 
by I. A. Richards of Cambridge. His most recent volume bears the 
title of Harlem Shadows, and is an interpretation of Negro life in 
New York City. His sympathy for the children of his race, who have 
fallen victims to the wiles of the great city, is disclosed in the following 
poem: 

HARLEM SHADOWS 


I hear the halting footsteps of a lass 
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall 
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass 
To bend and barter at desire’s call. 
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet 
Go prowling through the night from street to street! 


Through the long night until the silver break 
Of day the little gray feet know no rest; 
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake 
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast, 
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet 
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street. 


Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way 
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, 

Has pushed the timid little feet of clay, 
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race! 

Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet 

In Harlem wandering from street to street, 


NEGRO POETS 311 





The poet’s philosophy of triumph over every adversity 1s shown in 
his little stanza entitled “Baptism,” as follows: 


“Into the furnace let me go alone; 
Stay you without in terror of the heat. 
I will go naked in—for thus ’tis sweet— 
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone. 
I will not quiver in the frailest bone, 
You will not note a flicker of defeat; 
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet, 
My mouth give utterance to any moan. 
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears; 
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name. 
Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears, 
Transforming me into a shape of flame. 
I will come out, back to your world of tears, 
A stronger soul within a finer frame.” 


The reaction of McKay to the race riot in Washington in 1919 
was the following poem: 


If WE MUST DIE 


If we must die, let it not be like hogs 

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, 

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, 
Making their mock at our accursed lot. 

If we must die, O let us nobly die, 

So that our precious blood may not be shed 

In vain; then even the monsters we defy 

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! 

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! 
Though far out numbered let us show us brave, 
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! 
What though before us lies the open grave? 

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, 
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! 


James Weldon Johnson, a native of Florida who was educated 
at Atlanta University and at Columbia University, has written poems 
which have been accepted by the Century, Independent, and other mag- 
azines and he is the author of Fifty Years and Other Poems, 1917; 
and The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922. 

One of his poems of decided merit is an ode to Negro folk music 
under the title “O Black and Unknown Bards”: 


“O black and unknown bards of long ago, 
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? 


312 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


How, in your darkness, did you come to know 
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre 

Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes? 
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long, 
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise 

Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song? 


“Heart of what slave poured out such melody 

As ‘Steal away to Jesus’? On its strains 

His spirit must have nightly floated free, 

Though still about his hands he felt his chains. 

Who heard great ‘Jordan roll’? Whose starward eye 
Saw chariot ‘swing low,’ and who was he 

That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, 

‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’? 


“What merely living clod, what captive thing, 

Could up toward God through all its darkness grope, 
And find within its deadened heart to sing 

These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope? 
How did it catch that subtle undertone, 

That note in music heard not with the ears? 

How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown, 

Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears. 


“Not that great German master in his dream 

Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars 

At the creation, ever heard a theme 

Nobler than ‘Go down, Moses.’ Mark its bars 
How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir 

The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung 
Going to valorous deeds; such tones they were 
That helped make history when Time was young. 


“There is a wide, wide wonder in it all, 

That from degraded rest and servile toil 

The fiery spirit of the seer should call 

These simple children of the sun and soil. 

O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, 
You—you alone, of all the long, long line 

Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed 
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine. 


? 


“You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings; 

No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean 

Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings 
You touched in chord with music empyrean. 

You sang far better than you knew; the songs 
That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed 


NEGRO POETS 313 
mind leet 2 alle ht aaa his a EE URS SS ES 


Still live—but more than this to you belongs; 
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.” 


Among his dialect poems the following is representative: 


MY LADY’S LIPS AM LIKE DEV HONEY 
(Negro Love Song) 


Breeze a-sighin’ and a-blowin’, 
Southern summer night. 

Stars a-gleamin’ and a-glowin’, 
Moon jus shinin’ right. 

Strollin’, like all lovers do, 
Down de lane wid Lindy Lou; 
Honey on her lips to waste; 
’Speck I’m gwine to steal a taste. 


Oh, ma lady’s lips am like de honey, 

Ma lady’s lips am like de rose; 

An’ I’m jes like de little bee a-buzzin’ 
"Round de flowers wha’ de nectah grows. 
Ma lady’s lips dey smile so temptin’, 

Ma lady’s teeth so white dey shine, 

Oh, ma lady’s lips so tantalizin’, 

Ma lady’s lips so close to mine. 


Bird a-whistlin’ and a-swayin’ 
In de live-oak tree; 

Seems to me he keeps a-sayin’, 
“Kiss dat gal fo’ me.” 

Look heah, Mister Mockin’ Bird, 
Gwine to take you at yo’ word; 
If I meets ma Waterloo, 

Gwine to blame it all on you. 


Oh, ma lady’s lips am like de honey, 

Ma lady’s lips am like de rose; 

An’ I’m jes like de little bee a-buzzin 
"Round de flowers wha’ de nectah grows. 
Ma lady’s lips dey smile so temptin’, 

Ma lady’s teeth so white dey shine, 

Oh, ma lady’s lips so tantalizin’, 

Ma lady’s lips so close to mine. 


Honey in de rose, I ’spose, is 
Put der fo’ de bee; 

Honey on her lips, I knows, is 
Put der jes fo’ me. 

Seen a sparkle in her eye, 
Heard her heave a little sigh; 


314 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Felt her kinder squeeze mah han’, 
’Nuff to make me understan’, 


Sterling M. Means is a Georgia Negro who has written some pleas- 
ing verses under the title Deserted Cabin and Other Poems of which 
the following is typical: 


THE OLD DESERTED CABIN 


Dis ole deserted cabin 
Remin’s me ob de past; 
An’ when I gits ter t’inkin’, 
De tears comes tick an’, fast. 


I wunner whur’s A’nt Doshy, 
I wunner whur’s Brur Jim; 
I hyeahs no corn-songs ringin’, 
I hyeahs no Gospel hymn. 


Dis ole deserted cabin 
Am tumblin’ in decay; 
An’ all its ole-time dwellers 
Hab gone de silent way. 


Dey voices hushed in silence, 
De cabin drear an’ lone; 

An’ dey who used ter lib hyeah 
Long sense is dead an’ gone. 


Walter Everette Hawkins, a native of North Carolina, and, since 
1913, an employe in the city post office of Washington, is the author of 
Chords and Discords which contains some poems with a refreshing 
freedom from the tragedy of color. One of these dealing with the 
universal theme of romance is: 


ASK ME WHY I LOVE YOU 


Ask me why I love you, dear, 
And I will ask the rose 

Why it loves the dews of Spring 
At the Winter’s close; 

Why the blossoms’ nectared sweets 
Loved by questing bee,— 

I will gladly answer you, 
If they answer me. 


Ask me why I love you, dear, 
I will ask the flower 

Why it loves the Summer sun, 
Or the Summer shower; 


NEGRO POETS 315 


I will ask the lover’s heart 
Why it loves the moon, 

Or the star-besprinkled skies 
In a night in June. 


Ask me why I love you, dear, 
I will ask the vine 

Why its tendrils trustingly 
Round the oak entwine; 

Why you love the mignonette 
Better than the rue,— 

If you will but answer me, 
I will answer you. 


Ask me why I love you, dear, 
Let the lark reply, 

Why his heart is full of song 
When the twilight’s nigh; 
Why the lover heaves a sigh 
When her heart is true; 
If you will but answer me, 

I will answer you. 


James D. Corrothers, a native of Michigan, who was educated at 
Northwestern University and at Bennett College, North Carolina, is 
the author of Selected Poems, 1907, and The Dream and the Song, 
1914. Some of his poems have appeared in the Century and other 
magazines. Of the two poems quoted below, one has a fine poetic 
flavor, and the other an exquisite humor. 


IVE LeLNY DEMWOODS YW ANUNOBODY DAT’ 
I 


De ole owl libs in a lonely place 
"Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah! 
Eyes lak sunflowers in his face 
’Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah. 
Sets an’ broods alone, alone 
Sets an’ sigh an’ moan an’ moan, 
When de silvah moon goes down—— 
’Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah. 


II 


O heah de lonely whip-po’-will! 
’Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah 

Complainin’ when de night am still—— 
"Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah! 

Dah de wand’rin’ night winds stray, 

















316 





For ten years or more following the death of Paul Laurence Dun- 
bar, the Negro poet most widely known and esteemed was William 
His poems have found their way into 
the Atlantic Monthly, the Century, and other magazines of literary 
rank, and later appeared in book form under the titles of Lyrics of 


Stanley Braithwaite of Boston. 


THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Dah de groanin’ branches sway, 
Ghosts an’ witches lose dey way—— 
’Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah. 


III 


"Way down in my Southern home—— 
"Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah—— 

Dah’s de place I longs to roam 
*Way in de woods, an’ nobody dah. 

O ma lub wid eyes ob coal, 

Listen ’til ma story’s tole; 

Owl’s a-hootin’ in my soul—— 
"Way in de woods, and nobody dah! 





GHOSES 


I 


Dey may be ghoses, er dey may be none; 
I takes no chances on de thaing, ma se’f; 
’Twon’t neber sho’ten no man’s life to run, 
When somethin’ ’nother’s skeert ’im mose to deff. 


II 


De white man’s logic may be all-sufficin’ 
Foh white folks—in de day-time; but dey’s qu’ar 
Thaings seen at night; ’n’ when ma wool’s a-risin’, 
Dese feet o’ mine is gwine to bu’n de a’r. 


III 


Ain’t gwine to pestah wid no ’vestigation, 
Ma business is to git away f’om dah 
Fas’ is I kin—towards ma destination 
De ghose ain’t bo’n kin ketch me, nuther, sah! ? 





Life and Love, The House of Falling Leaves, etcetera. 


He is also the author of three anthologies, The Book of Elizabethan 
Verse, The Books of Restoration Verse, and The Book of Georgian 
V erse. 


*By courtesy of the Century Magazine. 
*By courtesy of Truth. 


NEGRO POETS 317 


For a number of years he has contributed articles on literary topics 
to the Boston Evening Transcript. 

Fenton Johnson of Chicago, editor of the Favorite Magazine, is 
the author of A Little Dreaming, 1914; Visions of the Dusk, 1915; 
and Songs of the Soil, 1916. 

His poem “The Mulatto’s Song” expresses the tragedy of the man 


of color. 
THE MULATTO’S SONG 


Die, you vain but sweet desires! 
Die, you living, burning fires! 

I am like a Prince of France,— 
Like a prince whose noble sires 

Have been robbed of heritage; 
I am phantom derelict, 

Drifting on a flaming sea. 


Everywhere I go, I strive, 
Vainly strive for greater things; 
Daisies die, and stars are cold, 
And canary never sings; 
Where I go they mock my name, 
Never grant me liberty, 
Chance to breathe and chance to do. 


How the World War filled the Negro with new aspiration and hope 
is brought out in his poem “The New Day,” which is in part as fol- 


lows: 

“Forget not, O my brothers, how we fought 

In No Man’s Land that peace might come again! 
Forget not, O my brothers, how we gave 

Red blood to save the freedom of the world! 

We were not free, our tawny hands were tied; 
But Belgium’s plight and Servia’s woes we shared 
Each rise of sun or setting of the moon. 

So when the bugle blast had called us forth 

We went not like the surly brute of yore, 

But, as the Spartan, proud to give the world 

The freedom that we never knew nor shared. 
These chains, O brothers mine, have weighed us down 
As Samson in the temple of the gods; 

Unloosen them and let us breathe the air 

That makes the goldenrod the flower of Christ; 
For we have been with thee in No Man’s Land, 
Through lake of fire and down to Hell itself; 
And now we ask of thee our liberty, 

Our fréedom in the land of Stars and Stripes.” 


318 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Countee P. Cullen, a student in New York University, is the author 
of a volume of poems issued by Harper & Brothers, 1925, under the 
title Color. From this volume the following two poems are quoted by 
courtesy of the publishers: 

INCIDENT 


Once riding in old Baltimore, 
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, 
I saw a Baltimorean 
Keep looking straight at me. 


Now I was eight and very small, 
And he was no whit bigger, 

And so I smiled, but he poked out 
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.” 


I saw the whole of Baltimore 
From May until December; 

Of all the things that happened there 
That’s all that I remember. 


DIALOGUE 


Soul: There is no stronger thing than song; 
In sun and rain and leafy trees 
It wafts the timid soul along 
On crested waves of melodies. 


Body: But leaves the body bare to feed 
Its hunger with its very need. 


Soul: Although the frenzied belly writhes, 
Yet render up in song your tithes; 
Song is the weakling’s oaken rod, 
His Jacob’s ladder dropped from God. 


Body: Song is not drink; song is not meat, 
Nor strong, thick shoes for naked feet. 


Soul: Who sings by unseen hands is fed 
With honeyed milk and warm, white bread; 
His ways in pastures green are led, 
And perfumed oil illumes his head; 
His cup with wine is surfeited, 
And when the last low note is read, 
He sings among the lipless dead 
With singing stars to crown his head. 


Body: But will song buy a wooden box 
The length of me from toe to crown, 
To keep me safe from carrion flocks 
When singing’s done and lyre laid down? 


NEGRO POETS 319 


In recent years one notices a marked tendency in Negro poetry 
toward wailing and bitter complaint, expressing the feeling of the cul- 
tivated Negro that he is isolated, despised, and debarred in some way 
from the fullness of life to which he has a right. 

Some of the poems indicative of the new trend in Negro literature 
are as follows: 


THE OPTIMIST 


Never mind, children, be patient awhile, 

And carry your load with a nod and a smile, 
For out of the hell and the hard of it all, 
Time is sure to bring sweetest honey—not gall. 


Out of the hell and the hard of it all, 

A bright star shall rise that never shall fall: 

A God-fearing race—proud, noble, and true, 

Giving good for the evil which they always knew. ... 


* a sa 


So dry your wet pillow and lift your bowed head 
And show to the world that hope is not dead! 
Be patient! Wait! See what yet may befall, 
Out of the hell and the hard of it all. 

—Ethyl Lewis. 


“My people laugh and sing 
And dance to death— 
None imagining 
The heartbreak under breath.” 
—Charles Bertram Johnson. 


AT. THE (CLOSED GATE OLNUSTICE 


To be a Negro in a day like this 

Demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow, 
Betrayed, like him whose woe-dimmed eyes gave bliss 
Still must one succor those who brought one low, 

To be a Negro in a day like this. 


To be a Negro in a day like this 

Demands rare patience—patience that can wait 
In utter darkness. ’Tis the path to miss, 

And knock, unheeded, at an iron gate, 

To be a Negro in a day like this. 


320 


THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





To be a Negro in a day like this 

Demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag 
Which is to us white freedom’s emphasis. 
Ah! one must love when truth and justice lag, 
To be a Negro in a day like this. 


To be a Negro in a day like this— 

Alas! Lord God, what evil have we done? 

Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst, 

But I pass by, the glorious goal unwon, 

“Merely a Negro’—in a day like this! 
—Corrothers. 


BROTHERS 


They bind his feet; they thong his hands 
With hard hemp rope and iron bands. 

They scourge his back in ghoulish glee; 

And bleed his flesh ;—men, mark ye—free. 
They still his groans with fiendish shout, 
Where flesh streams red they ply the knout. 
Thus sons of men feed lust to kill 

And yet, oh God! they’re brothers still. 


They build a pyre of torch and flame 
While Justice weeps in deepest shame. 
F’en Death in pity bows its head, 

Yet ’midst these men no prayer is said. 
They gather up charred flesh and bone— 
Mementos—boasting brave deed done. 

They sip of gore their souls to fill; 

Drink deep of blood their hands did spill. 


Go tell the world what men have done 

Who prate of God and yet have none; 

Think of themselves as wholly good, 
Blaspheme the name of brotherhood; 

Who hearken not as brothers cry 

For brother’s chance to live and die. 

To keep a demon’s murder tryst 

They'd rend the sepulcher of Christ. 

—Joshua Henry Jones. 


“What need have I for memory, 
When not a single flower 

Has bloomed within life’s desert 
For me, one little hour? 


NEGRO POETS eM 


“What need have I for memory, 
Whose burning eyes have met 

The curse of unborn happiness 
Winding the trail regret? 


“I am folding up my little dreams 
Within my heart to-night, 
And praying I may soon forget 
The torture of their sight.” 
—Mrs. G. D. Johnson. 


ELE OCT OROG IN 


One drop of midnight in the dawn of life’s pulsating stream 

Marks her an alien from her kind, a shade amid its gleam, 

Forevermore her step she bends, insular, strange, apart— 

And none can read the riddle of her strangely warring heart. 

The stormy current of her blood beats like a mighty sea 

Against the man-wrought iron bars of her captivity. 

For refuge, succor, peace, and rest, she seeks that humble fold 

Whose every breath is kindliness, whose hearts are purest gold. 
—Mrs. G. D. Johnson, 


DEL T bet 


All these must die before the Morning break: 

They who at God an angry finger shake, 

Declaring that because He made them White, 

Their race should rule the world by sacred right. 
They who deny a common Brotherhood— 

Who cry aloud, and think no Blackman good— 

The blood-cursed mob always eager to take 

The rope in hand or light the flaming stake, 

Jeering the wretch while he in death pain quakes— 
All these must die before the Morning breaks. 


All these must die before the Morning breaks: 

The Blackmen, faithless, whose loud laughter wakes 
Harsh echoes in the most unbiased places. 

They who choose vice, and scorn the gentle graces— 
Who by their manners breed contemptuous hate, 
Suggesting Jim-crow laws from state to state— 
They who think on earth they may not find 

An ideal man or woman of their kind. 

But from some other Race that ideal take— 

All these must die before the Morning break! 


322 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





We know, O Lord, that there will come a time, 
When o’er the World will dawn the Age Sublime, 
When Truth shall call to all mankind to stand 
Before Thy throne as Brothers, hand in hand, 
Be not displeased with him who this song makes— 
All these must die before the Morning breaks! 
—Roscoe C. Jamison. 


Why should these cries of melancholy and bitter complaint find such 
general expression in the more recent Negro poets? 

Nearly all of the Negro poets are mulattoes. Now, why should the 
mulattoes of to-day be more downcast than the free mulattoes of the 
ante-bellum days? And why should the mulattoes of the North be 
more downcast than the mulattoes of the South? 

It might be argued by the eugenist that the outcry of the mulatto 
is due to the disharmony of his inherited traits, the surging of the 
white blood in his veins as it surged in Mark Twain’s mulatto char- 
acter, Roxanna. The cultivated mulatto constitutes the tragedy of the 
Negro problem as the cultivated mixed type constitutes a tragedy in 
other racial blends. 

Again it might be argued by the sociologist that the mulatto is de- 
pressed and resentful merely because he is socially proscribed. The 
statement is often found in treatises on the Negro that the cultivated 
mulatto has something of the white man’s disinclination to mingle with 
the blacks, and the inference from this supposed fact is that the mulatto 
craves the society of the whites. The mulatto is supposed to ask him- 
self such questions as these: Why should merely one drop of black 
blood in my veins consign me to this isolation? Why should a mere 
difference in the pigmentation of the skin separate one man from per- 
fect fellowship with another? Because the mulatto is socially isolated 
he is supposed to feel that the world is cold and unjust. 

But, as plausible as this explanation seems to be, there are reasons 
for doubting its validity. It is by no means certain that the mulatto 
covets the society of white people. Generally speaking, we should ex- 
pect that any more or less distinct racial group would find its most 
satisfying fellowship within the circle of its own kind. As the colored 
people of the United States raise their level of culture, and as the num- 
ber of distinguished men among them increases, we should expect that 
their feeling of race solidarity and of race pride would become more 


NEGRO POETS 323 





pronounced and, so far as social contact is concerned, that they would 
have little reason to feel isolated. 

Peter Nielsen, who has studied the ways and thoughts of the na- 
tives of Africa for many years, tells us in his recent book that there is 
a growing tendency among whites and blacks of South Africa to remain 
ethically separate.* Another significant fact is that many mulattoes 
in the United States are so light of complexion that, if they had a 
mind to do so, they could cross the color line any day by merely chang- 
ing their locality. 

These considerations do not lend strong support to the idea that the 
melancholy notes of Negro poetry are due to the repressed desire of 
the colored people to commingle with the whites. 

I think that the fundamental cause of the sad dissatisfaction ex- 
pressed in Negro poetry is to be found in the general feeling among the 
colored people that they are looked upon as an inferior and despised 
race, and that, no matter what degree of excellence they may attain to, 
they cannot gain the respect and recognition which they merit. Take 
for instance Dunbar’s pathetic poem, “Sympathy,” wherein he speaks 
of the caged bird beating its wings “till its blood is red on the cruel 
bars.” Here it is evident, both from the title of the poem and from its 
content, that the author is not troubled over the question of social re- 
lationships, but that he suffers as a caged bird because his genius has 
no world of sympathy and appreciation in which to wing its flight. 

It is the ambition of a man of culture of any race to play his part 
before an audience which is representative of the most enlightened 
class, and which is competent to appreciate the merit and to fix the 
rank of the actor. The mulatto who develops a talent in any field of 
endeavor feels that he is condemned to act upon an inferior stage, and 
before an unrepresentative audience which, however loudly it may ap- 
plaud, is powerless to give him the recognition he craves. Sometimes, 
after infinite patience and long suffering, by accident or stealth, he is 
discovered by a few of the actors and auditors of the larger theater, 
but, no matter how great his merit, the stage-door of the larger theater 
remains closed to him. 

There can be no greater wrong inflicted upon any genius than to 
bar him from recognition by whatever authoritative group may happen 
to sit in judgment. And there is no uglier, or more cruel manifestation 
of race prejudice, than that which would lead one to disdain a work 

* Neilsen, The Black Man’s Place in South Africa, p. 121. 


324 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


of art merely because it is the product of a man of color. Who to-day 
can read the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar and not feel a regret 
that so fine a spirit as his should have lived among us and received so 
little notice or sympathy that it had to beat its wings red against the 
bars of our indifference? 

The Negroes of the United States are extremely sensitive to the 
opinion and attitude of the white people, and what they crave, and de- 
serve more than anything else, is to be respected according to their 
merits. To accord this respect to the Negro involves no breaking down 
of the ethnical separateness of the races, but it involves the building up 
of better race relations and a higher culture for both races. Every 
aspiring Negro should be encouraged by the white people to rise to the 
top, and should be applauded by them when he gets there, for nothing is 
more sure to hamper the advance of one race than to live side by side 
with another which is deprived of hope. 

Lord Macaulay believed that poetry necessarily declined with the 
advance of civilization, for the reason that civilization has a tendency 
to obliterate from the mind of man that imagery which is the essence 
of all poetry. Among a somewhat backward people, whose interests are 
mostly objective, the mind of the individual is a sort of picture gallery, 
filled with the imagery of the outer world; whereas among a highly 
civilized people, whose interests are mostly subjective, the mind of the 
individual is merely so many pigeon-holes for storing up abstract and 
classified knowledge. A highly civilized people, therefore, will have 
many distinguished scientists, but no great poets.* 

If Macaulay’s theory is correct it would lead us to anticipate, for 
some years to come, an increasing ascendancy of Negro poetry, and, 
since poetry is destined to be a scarce article in the future, we should 
give a cordial welcome to whatever muse, white or black, may be able 
to enliven and charm our declining imagination. 

*“Essay on Milton.” 


CHAPTER 40 
NEGRO NOVELISTS AND HISTORIANS 


Novels of Chesnutt and Dunbar—Historical Studies of Williams, Brawley, Scott, 
Grimké, and Others 


N novel-writing Charles Waddell Chesnutt takes the highest rank 

among the Negroes. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1858, he began 
as a teacher in a public school in North Carolina, the state from which 
his parents had come. Later he was chosen principal of the North 
Carolina Normal School at Fayetteville. At the age of twenty-five he 
left North Carolina and for a while worked in a newspaper office in 
New York. Then he returned to his native home in Cleveland, where 
he worked as a stenographer and at the same time studied law. 

In 1887 he was admitted to the bar, but his natural bent carried 
him into the field of literature. His observations in North Carolina 
led him to write a series of short stories portraying the dialect, man- 
ners, superstitions and tribulations of the Southern Negro. These 
were published in the Atlantic Monthly and later appeared in book 
form under the title The Conjure Woman. 

Chesnutt is distinctly a problem novelist. His stories deal with the 
problem of race prejudice and the tragedy of those who live on the 
border-line of color. 

His first novel, The House Behind the Cedars, which appeared in 
1920 and which has been the most widely read, has as its central theme 
the tragedy of the mulatto. The heroine of the story is a mulatto girl 
who has the aspiration of the Caucasian and the handicaps of the 
Negro. The story reveals the sufferings and tragic pathos resulting 
from the white man’s sin in bringing into the world a child endowed 
with the passion to rise, but without hope. 

Two others of Chesnutt’s novels, The Marrow of Tradition and The 
Colonel’s Dreams, revolve around the same theme and reflect the 
shadows that overspread the life of the half-caste. 

Paul Laurence Dunbar, though distinguished as a poet rather than 
as a writer of prose, is the author of several novels: Folks from Dixie, 
1898, The Love of Landry, 1900; Heart of Happy Hollow, 1904; etcet- 

325 


326 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





era. Healso wrote Strength of Gideon and Other Stories, 1902. All of 
these have literary and artistic merit and reveal much that is picturesque 
and blithesome as also much that is disconsolate in human nature. Had 
his poetry not overshadowed his prose, he would have won a respectable 
place in literature as a novelist. 

A novel, The Fire in the Flint, by Walter E. White, represents the 
ill treatment of the Negro and all of the darker aspects of the race 
problem in a small Georgia town. 

A recent book by Jean Toomer entitled Cane is made up of short 
stories, a drama and a few poems, all having reference mostly to the 
Negroes in Georgia and Washington, D. C. 

In the field of history a conspicuous figure is George W. Williams, 
author of The History of the Negro Race in America. This book is 
highly valuable as a piece of research, giving a scholarly presentation 
of the status of the Negro from Colonial times to the present. Its 
chief fault is animus against the white man. The author dwells bitterly 
upon the grievances of his people, and overlooks the many blessings 
and splendid opportunities which fortune has brought to them through 
contact with the white man’s culture. The book sounds no note of en- 
thusiasm over the enlargement of the Negro’s freedom in the West 
Indies, in North and South America, and even in Africa. It stresses 
what the Negro has endured, not what he has achieved. Moreover, it 
lacks the discriminating judgment which is essential in writing history. 

A historian of the opposite type is Benjamin Brawley, who deals 
with more recent history and shows us what the Negro has accom- 
plished as a result of such opportunities as chance has placed in his 
path. 

Mr. Brawley received the degree of master of arts from Harvard 
and is now professor of English in the Atlanta Baptist College. 

His publications are: A Short History of the American Negro, 
1913; The Negro in Literature and Art, 1918; A Social History of 
the American Negro, 1921; Africa and the War, 1918; Women of 
Achievements, 1919. All of these books are valuable in telling what 
the Negro has done and is doing, and in furnishing the inspiration 
for further strides upward. 

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder and editor of the Journal of Negro 
History, is the author of the following books: The Education of the 
Negro Prior to 1861, The History of the Negro Church, The Negro 
in Our History, and A Century of Negro Migration. 

All of his books are based on painstaking research, and they bring 


NEGRO NOVELISTS AND HISTORIANS 3277, 


to light a vast collection of important facts showing the part which 
the Negro has played in American history. As editor of the Journal 
of Negro History, Dr. Woodson is doing a valuable service in furnish- 
ing a medium through which the achievements of the Negro can reach 
the educated public. 

Archibald H. Grimké, of Boston, is the author of biographical 
sketches of Garrison and Sumner, written for the American Reformers 
Series, also author of Modern Industriahsm and the Negro of the 
United States, and of sundry papers dealing with the civil rights ques- 
tion. 

The most recent historical writer is Emmett J. Scott, author of 
The American Negro in the Great War. 

His book gives a very interesting and full account of the part played 
by both the Negro soldiers and Negro civilians in the Great War. It 
covers the period from the declaration of war against Germany to the 
mustering out of the soldiers after the armistice. It tells of the vari- 
ous services rendered by each of the Negro regiments in the Army, with 
a recital of many heroic and thrilling incidents of the battle-field, in- 
cluding the names of the regiments, companies, and individuals receiv- 
ing the Croix de Guerre and other recognitions of distinguished service. 

The book is an exceedingly valuable contribution to the history of 
the World War. 


CHAPTER 41 
THE NEGRO ON THE RACE PROBLEM 


Personality and Points of View of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, 
and James D. Corrothers—Discussions of the Problem by Thomas, Holtzclaw, 
Kelly Miller, and Others 


OOKER T. WASHINGTON, who has impressed the American 

people more than any other Negro, is the author of many books 
and magazine articles covering matters of vital interest alike to the 
American Negro and the American white man. His most notable book 
is his autobiography, Up from Slavery. Commenting upon this book, 
William Archer, an English novelist, says: 

“His life, as related by himself in ‘Up from Slavery,’ is a story of 
great heroism to rank with any in literature. Born a slave in a one 
room cabin, with no glazed window, and an earthen floor, he remained 
there until, when he was eight or nine, emancipation came. After that 
he worked in a salt-furnace and in a coal mine, devoured all the time 
by a passion for knowledge which overcame what seemed almost in- 
credible difficulties. At last he set forth for Hampton Institute, where 
General Armstrong was then just beginning his beneficent work. He 
had five hundred miles to travel and scarcely any money. He worked 
and often begged his way; for Mr. Washington has never been ashamed 
to beg when there was a good object to be served. Arriving at Rich- 
mond, Virginia, without a cent, he worked for several days unloading 
a ship, and slept at night in a hollow under a wooden sidewalk. 

“At Hampton he found the system in operation which he has since 
adopted at Tuskegee Normal; that tuition is covered by endowments, 
while the student is enabled to pay (in part, at any rate) by work for 
his board and clothing. He soon distinguished himself, not by great 
attainments, but by the thoroughness of his work and the sincerity and 
elevation of his character. Then, in 1881, it occurred to the State of 
Alabama to start a normal school for coloured people at a little village 
named Tuskegee, some forty miles from the capital, Montgomery. It 
did not, however, occur to the State of Alabama to provide any build- 


ings or apparatus; it simply allotted £400 a year to be applied to the 
328 


THE NEGRO ON THE RACE PROBLEM 320 


salaries of the teachers. On General Armstrong’s recommendation, 
Mr. Washington, then a youth of some five and twenty years, was en- 
trusted with the organization and management of the school; and the 
account of how, with practically no resources at all, he built up the great 
and beneficent institution which has now made the name of Tuskegee 
world-famous is indeed a remarkable story of indomitable courage and 
persistence. Mr. Washington felt that his personal failure would be 
reckoned a failure to his race. Out of the nettle, danger, he plucked 
the flower, safety, and Tuskegee now represents the greatest individ- 
ual triumph his race has ever achieved.” 4 

Other books by Booker T. Washington are: The Story of the 
Negro, 1909; frederick Douglass, 1907; My Larger Education, 1912; 
Character Building, 1903; Working with the Hands, 1904, etcetera. 

He wrote articles for the leading magazines and was greatly in 
demand as a lecturer. 

Following his untimely death an editorial in The World’s Work paid 
him this tribute: 

“Booker T. Washington had a superlative degree of common sense. 
That was his chief characteristic. He believed in the constant appli- 
cation of the homely doctrine of hard work. That was his solution of 
the so-called Negro problem. His doctrine could well have been ap- 
plied to many white people, but he never applied it to them. His 
business was helping the Negro and he minded his business. That was 
another of his chief characteristics. 

“He tried to teach the people of his race that if they lived decently 
and worked hard they would gradually overcome the handicaps under 
which they suffered. He warned them against the allurements of pol- 
itics, of trying to gain enough political power to legislate themselves 
into positions which they could not hold. To those who demand 
equality he answered that when the best Negro society was as advanced 
as the best white society there would be no incentive to mix the two; 
and that until that time it was obviously impossible. 

“His philosophy left every proper door of hope open to the Negro 
and yet asked for him no special favors. He did protest against unfair 
treatment, and his protests received more recognition than those of any 
other man of his race for the very reason that he asked that the Negro 
be given his due and did not ask for more than that. His philosophy 
did not spend itsel® so much upon the rights of the Negro as upon his 
duties and opportunities. 

* Archer, Through Afro-America, p. 49. 


330 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“The measure of the man’s strength was that he could become the 
leader of his race upon so homely a programme as the doctrine of hard 
work and right living. 

“He was not liked by those Negroes who wished to achieve prog- 
ress by the short cuts of agitation and legislation. He was not liked 
by white people who have never admitted that the Negro and the 
white man are different. But to the great majority of the sensible 
men of both races his doctrine appealed. They aided his efforts and 
they deeply regret his loss.” 

After a tour of observation of Negro life in the South, Ray Stan- 
nard Baker said in reference to Booker T. Washington: ‘Wherever 
I found a prosperous Negro enterprise, a thriving business place, a 
good home, there I was almost sure to find Booker T. Washington’s 
picture over the fireplace, or a little framed motto expressing his gos- 
pel of work and service.” 

The preéminent author among the Negroes of to-day is W. E. 
Burghardt DuBois, though it is difficult to know under what literary 
head to class him. His authorship covers the field of fiction, history, 
biography, economics, and sociology. Perhaps his proper classification 
is that of essayist. 

Born at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, he was gradu- 
ated from Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1888. From there 
he went to Harvard University, where in 1890 he received the degree 
of bachelor of arts; in 1891, the degree of master of arts; and in 1895, 
the degree of doctor of philosophy. 

He taught for a while at Wilberforce University and from 1896 
to 1910 was professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. 
Ite gave up his chair in order to take up work with the National As- 
sociation for the Advancement of the Colored People, and was elected 
editor of the organ of the association which appears monthly under the 
title of The Crisis. 

DuBois’s first publication was his doctor’s thesis The Suppression 
of the Slave Trade, a scholarly, unbiased discussion of the movement 
for the suppression of the slave trade in the Colonial and later period 
of American history. In 1899, he published The Philadelphia Negro 
and in the years immediately following he wrote several articles deal- 
ing with the dark side of the color line, which appeared in the Ailantic 
Monthly, The World’s Work, and other magazines. These articles are 
embodied in the volume, The Souls of Black Folk. 


THE NEGRO ON THE RACE PROBLEM 331 


His Souls of Black Folk, his Darkwater, together with half a dozen 
short essays of like themes, may be considered distinct literary pro- 
ductions. 

Besides his Suppression of the Slave Trade, his contribution to 
history consists of an article on John Brown for the American Crisis 
Biographies, and numerous magazine articles touching upon the eco- 
nomic, educational and religious history of the Negro. 

Most of his writings in recent years, especially his editorials in The 
Crisis, have been in favor of securing for the Negro a full share in 
American culture by the complete ignoring of color. 

Glenn Frank, in his article “The Clash of Color,” Century Magazine, 
November, 1919, says of DuBois: 

“DuBois, in the early days of his public career as a scholar and 
writer, wrote in a style of liquid beauty his protests against the color 
line in American life. Huis writings were touched with an appealing 
sadness. The poet in him spoke in those days. But in these later 
days hate has rusted upon his pen. He speaks more bluntly. He snarls 
as a wolf at bay. The poet has abdicated in favor of the propagandist. 
He tells the Negro soldier that he went to Europe as a fighting man 
and that he must return fighting, fighting, fighting for the unqualified 
rights of an American citizen.” 

One of the best books written by a Negro is the autobiography 
of James D. Corrothers published under the title In Spite of the Handi- 
cap. 
The author is of Scotch-Irish, Indian, and Negro stock, the Cau- 
casian element showing itself in his fine features and intellectual coun- 
tenance. He was born in a Negro settlement of Cass County, Michi- 
gan; educated at Northwestern University and elsewhere; and has had 
a very eventful life in both North and South. 

In his introduction to this book, Ray Stannard Baker says that 
it “gives us a striking picture of what race prejudice means in the 
North, and the difficulties which the Northern Negro is forced to 
meet. It also throws much light on conditions with which few writers 
on the race question have dealt: I mean the problems which confront 
the abler and more intelligent Negroes, the leaders of the race, in their 
contact with their own people. And finally it is a book singularly with- 
out rancor: the book of a man who in spite of difficulties has main- 
tained a cheerful and helpful outlook on life.” 

Mr. Corrothers’ story of his life is comparable in interest and heroic 


S82 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


achievement to Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery. It begins 
with the career of a bootblack and leads up to that of a preacher of 
the Gospel and a writer who finds entrée to the leading magazines. 

Mr. Corrothers is the author of a publication entitled The Black 
Cat Club, which contains character studies of Negro life in the great 
cities of the North, and includes several poems by the author in Negro 
dialect. 

William H. Thomas, a Negro lawyer of Cincinnati, is the author of 
a book, The American Negro, which of all the books written by Negroes 
is perhaps the most unpopular. His point of view is that of the irra- 
tionally prejudiced white man.. A casual reader of the book would 
never imagine that the author was a man of African descent. 

None of the ancestors of Thomas were slaves. On his mother’s 
side he was of German and English stock. His maternal grandfather 
was a son of a white indentured servant by a Negro man born in 
Pennsylvania in 1758. His maternal grandmother was a white German 
woman born in Maryland in 1770, and from that colony she emigrated 
to Ohio. His paternal grandparents were of mixed blood and were 
born in Virginia. 

Thomas was born in Pickanay County, Ohio, in 1843. His parents 
were devout Christians and in their morning orisons and every prayer 
never omitted supplication for “those in bondage.” 

In his book he says: “As far back as I can remember, my parents’ 
home was the rendezvous of escaping slaves from whose recital my 
childish heart drank in the miseries of human chattel.” 

A term in a county school and ten months’ study in a college in 
Ohio was all of the schooling that Thomas had. He volunteered in the 
Civil War, and in an attack upon the defenses of Wilmington, North 
Carolina, he received a gunshot wound which cost him his right arm. 

After the war he studied theology and worked on a religious news- 
paper. In 1871, he was sent to South Carolina to teach the freedmen, 
and a year later was licensed to practice law in that state. He was ap- 
pointed justice of Newberry, and later was elected a member of 
the South Carolina legislature, in which he was instrumental in 
settling the presidential vote of South Carolina in 1876. He traveled 
all over the South and had a wide acquaintance with the colored 
population. 

Thomas is very pessimistic as to the future of the Negro in Amer- 
ica. His attitude toward the Negro problem is like that of the religious 
evangelist toward the unconverted, He believes that regeneration is 


THE NEGRO ON THE RACE PROBLEM 333 


entirely a matter of will power of the individual. He, therefore, mini- 
mizes all efforts at regeneration through laws or other external means. 

He says, “The Negro can be a man if he will. All human regenera- 
tion—moral, mental, physical—is an internal process begun and com- 
pleted within the individual himself.” ? 

William Holtzclaw is the author of a very buoyant little volume, 
The Black Man’s Burden. It is the story of his achievement in educa- 
tional work and, at the same time, an inspiring account of the progress 
of his race in education. The author entered Tuskegee penniless and 
worked his way through. He is now principal of the Utica Normal and 
Industrial Institute of Mississippi. 

In his introduction to the book Booker Washington says: “I do 
not know a single graduate of Tuskegee who has more completely car- 
ried out in his life the spirit which the school has sought to instill in 
its students, nor do I know one who is doing a more useful or more 
successful work for his race and for the community in which he lives.” 

Dr. Robert R. Moton, the successor to Washington as principal at 
Tuskegee, is the author of Finding a Way Out, An Autobiography, 
1920. In this book, as also in his public lectures, he shows breadth of 
outlook and a fine spirit. He is interested in the constructive side of 
the Negro problem, and, like his predecessor, is trying to get the colored 
people to do the things needed to be done. He is a man of devotion to 
his race and his country and is winning his way as a great leader. 

Kelly Miller, a professor in Howard University, is author of Race 
Adjustment, An Appeal to Conscience, Out of the House of Bondage, 
etcetera. His books are a plea for more righteousness in all of the 
white man’s dealings with the Negro. He is an outstanding leader of 
Negro thought, and represents a class of educated Negroes who are 
earnestly striving for a rational adjustment of race relationships. 

William Pickens, an ex-slave from South Carolina, has become 
known through his two books, The Hour of Slavery, an Autobiography, 
1911; and The New Negro: His Political, Civil, and Mental Status 
and Related Essays, 1916. The author graduated at Yale University 
in 1904, and has since been a professor in Talladega College, Alabama. 
He is a man of mediocre ability, lacking in imagination, literary refine- 
ment, and balanced judgment. In his latter book he classes Alexander 
Hamilton as a Negro. 

William A. Sinclair, author of The Aftermath of Slavery, sees only 


*Thomas, The American Negro, p. 365. 


334 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


the political aspect of the Negro problem, and his book is a tirade against 
the white South for limiting the suffrage of the blacks. 

Alain Locke’s The New Negro, 1925, breathes the spirit of the edu- 
cated and aspiring man of color. 

J. W. Cromwell’s book, The Negro in American History, 1914, is an 
extravagant and vaunting narrative of the achievements of his race and 
is entirely without merit. 

To sum up, I would say that in both quantity and quality the writ- 
ings of the American Negro are highly creditable in view of his lim- 
ited opportunities. In the fields of poetry, history, autobiography and 
moral philosophy, one can single out productions which may be con- 
sidered valuable contributions to the world’s culture. 


GUIAPT oRta2 
NEGRO FOLK SONGS 


Their African Origin—Spirituals of the Southern Plantations—Funeral Songs— 
Work Songs—Satirical and Humorous Songs—Influence of Negro Folk 
Songs on the Music of the Whites 


HE music of the American Negro had its beginning in Africa. 

The folk music of the native African is very difficult to reproduce 
for the reason that it cannot be written so as to preserve its emotional 
color or timbre. Mr. Krehbiel in his Afro-American Folk Songs has 
given us a very good collection of native African music, but we can 
form a correct idea of it only from the impressions it has made upon 
the white residents in Africa who have had the pleasure of listening to 
it. All missionaries and explorers describe the music as peculiarly 
plaintive and melancholy. 

The original poetry which belonged to the African folk music was 
lost in transit to America, but the emotional tone and rhythm were trans- 
ferred to new compositions, partly original, and partly imitative modifi- 
cations of the hymns sung by white people. 

Congo airs have followed the wanderings of the Arab, have enlivened 
the street music of Constantinople, and have charmed the courts of 
Bersia, 

The musical impulse in the Negro prompts to spontaneous recitative 
and improvised songs, and, in the atmosphere of the Southern planta- 
tions, the Negro developed unconsciously a new and rich store of folk 
music. 

The songs of the black slaves in the South are, in the opinion of 
Krehbiel, “original and native products. They contain idioms which 
were transplanted hither from Africa, but as songs they are the prod- 
uct of American institutions; of the social, political, and geographical 
environment within which their creators were placed in America; of the 
influences to which they were subjected in America; of the joys, sor- 
rows and experiences which fell to their lot in America.” ? 

“Perhaps the innate lightness of heart and carelessness of disposi- 

* Krehbiel, Afro-American Folk Songs, p. 22. 
335 


336 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


tion, carefully cultivated by the slaveholders for obvious reasons, had 
much to do with the circumstance that there are few utterances of pro- 
found sadness or despair found in the songs, but many of resilient hope- 
fulness and cheerful endurance of present pain in contemplation of the 
rewards of rest and happiness hereafter.” * 

The following are some of the best known folk songs: 


SOMEBODY’S BURIED IN THE GRAVEYARD 


Somebody’s buried in the graveyard, 
Somebody’s buried in the sea, 

Going to get up in the morning a shouting, 
Going to join Jubilee. 


1. Although you see me coming along so, 
To the promised land I’m bound to go. 


2. I have some friends before me... gone, 
By the grace of God I'll follow on. 


3. Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m... down, 
But still my soul is heavenly bound.® 


BALM IN GILEAD 


There is a Balm in Gilead, 
To make the wounded whole, 
There is a Balm in Gilead, 
To heal the sin-sick soul. 


1. Sometimes I feel discouraged, 
And think my work’s in vain, 
But then the Holy Spirit 
Revives my soul again. 


2. Don’t ever feel discouraged, 
For Jesus is your friend, 
And if you lack for knowledge, 
He'll ne’er refuse to lend. 


3. If you cannot preach like Peter, 
If you cannot pray like Paul, 
You can tell the love of Jesus, 
And say, “He died for all.” * 


? Krehbiel, op. cit., p. 45. 
* Work, Folk Song of the American Negro, p. 34. 
*Work, op. cit., p. 43. 


NEGRO FOLK SONGS 337 





“OH, NOBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLE I SEE” 


Chorus 
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I see, 
Nobody knows but Jesus. 
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I see, 
Glory hallelujah. 


1. Sometimes I’m ‘up, 
Sometimes I’m down, 
Oh, yes, Lord. 
Sometimes I’m level with the ground. 
Oh, yes, Lord. 


Chorus 
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I see, etc. 


2. If you get there before I do, 
Oh, yes, Lord. 
Tell all-a-my friends I’m coming, too, 
Oh, yes, Lord. 


Chorus 
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I see, etc.® 


“SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT” 


Chorus 


Swing low, sweet chariot, 

Coming for to carry me home; 
Swing low, sweet chariot, 

Coming for to carry me home. 


1. If you get there before I do, 
Coming for to carry me home; 
Tell all my friends I’m coming, too, 
Coming for to carry me home. 


Chorus 
Swing low, sweet chariot, etc. 


2. I looked over Jordan and what did I see? 
Coming for to carry me home; 
A band of angels coming after me, 
Coming for to carry me home. 


Chorus 
Swing low, sweet chariot, etc.° 


* Work, op. cit., p. 43. 
*Tbid., p. 60. 


338 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 
I ee a ll el 


“IN BRIGHT MANSIONS ABOVE” 
Chorus 


In bright mansions above, 
In bright mansions above, 
Lord, I want to live up yonder, 
In bright mansions above. 


1. My mother’s gone to glory, 

I want to go there, too; 

Lord, I want to live up yonder, 

In bright mansions above. 

Chorus 
In bright mansions above, etc. 

2. My Saviour’s gone to glory, 

I want to go there, too; 


Lord, I want to live up yonder, 
In bright mansions above. 


Chorus 


In bright mansions above, etc." 


SDYPAND GBS 


Chorus 


Oh, by and by, by and by, 
I’m a-going to lay down my heavy load. 


1. I know my robe’s going to fit a-me, well. 
I’m a-going to lay down my heavy load; 
I tried it on at the gates of hell, 
I’m a-going to lay down my heavy load. 


Chorus 


Oh, by and by, by and by, etc. 
2. Oh, some-a these mornings bright and fair, 
I’m a-going to lay down my heavy load; 
Going to take-a my wings and cleave the air, 
I’m a-going to lay down my heavy load. 


Chorus 


Oh, by and by, by and by, etc? 


* Work, op. cit., p. 62. 
tbsp. 70, 


NEGRO FOLK SONGS 339 





YOU MUST BE PURE AND HOLY 


1. When I was wicked an’—a prone to sin, 
My Lord, brethren, ah my Lord! 
I thought that I couldn’t be born again, 
My Lord, brethren, ah my Lord! 


Chorus 


You must be pure and holy, 
You must be pure an’—a holy, 
You must be pure and holy 
To see God feed his lambs. 


2. [ll run all round the cross and cry, 
My Lord, brethren, ah my Lord, 
Or give me Jesus, or I die, 
My Lord, brethren, ah my Lord. 


You must be pure and holy, etc. 


3. The Devil am a liar and conjurer too, 
My Lord, etc. 


If you don’t look out he’ll conjure you, (cut you in two, ) 
(cut you through, ) 


My Lord, etc. 
4. O run up, sonny, and get your crown, 
My Lord, etc. 
And by your Father sit you down, 
My Lord, etc. 
5. I was pretty young when I begun, 
My Lord, etc. 
But, now my work is almost done, 
My Lord, etc. 
6. The Devil’s mad and I am glad, 
My Lord, etc. 
He lost this soul, he thought he had, 
My Lord, etc. 
7. Go ’way, Satan, I don’t mind you, 
My Lord, etc. 
You wonder, too, that you can’t go through, 
My Lord, etc. 
8. A lily white stone came rolling down, 
My Lord, etc. 
It rolled like thunder through the town, 
My Lord, etc.” 


* Allen, Slave Songs of the United States, p. 107. 


340 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





THE OLD" SHIP tOF°ZAON 


1. What ship is that you’re enlisted upon? 
O glory hallelujah! 
’Tis the old ship of Zion, hallelujah! 
’Tis the old ship of Zion, hallelujah! 


2. And who is the Captain of the ship that 
you're on?—O glory, etc, 
My saviour is the Captain, hallelujah! * 


O’ER ‘THE CROSSING 


Bendin’ knees a achin’, 
Body rack’d wid pain, 

I wish I was a child of God, 
I’d git home bime-by. 


Keep pray-in’ I do believe 

We're a long time waggin’ o’ de cross-in’, 
Keep pray-in’, I do believe 

We'll git home to heaven bime-by. 


O yonder’s my old mudder, 

Been a-waggin’ at the hill so long, 
It’s about time she cross over, 

Git home bime-by. 


O Hear dat lumberin’ thunder 
A-roll from do’ to do’ 

A callin’ de people home to God; 
Dey’ll git home bime-by. 


O see dat forked lightin’ 
A-jump from cloud to cloud, 
A-pickin’ up God’s chil’n; 
Dey’ll git home bime-by. 

The Negro custom of sitting up with a corpse was often accompanied 

by the following song: 
“T look o’er yan-der, what I see? 
Somebody’s dying ev’ry day. 
See bright an-gel stand-in’ dere; 
Somebody’s dying ev’ry day. 
Chorus 

“Ev'ry day, pass-in’ a vay 
Ev’ry day, pass-in’ a vay, 
Ev’ry day, pass-in’ a vay 
Somebody’s dying ev’ry day.” 

* Allen, op. cit., p. 102. 


NEGRO FOLK SONGS 341 





The following nocturnal funeral song was written down by Col. 
Higgison: 

“T know moonlight, I know starlight; 
I lay dis body down. 

I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight; 
I lay dis body down. 

I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard, 
When I lay dis body down, 

I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard 
To lay dis body down. 

I lay in de grave an stretch out my arms; 
I lay dis body down. 

I go to de judgment in de evenin’ of de day 
When I lay dis body down. 

An’ my soul an’ your soul will meet in de day 
When we lay dis body down.” 


The Colonel says of this song, “I was startled when first I came on 
such a flower of poetry in the dark soil.” 1 

Says Krehbiel, “There was sunshine as well as gloom in the life 
of the black slaves in the Southern Colonies and States, and so we 
have songs which are gay as well as grave; but as a rule the finest songs 
are the fruits of suffering undergone and the hope of the deliverance 
from bondage which was to come with translation to heaven after 
meaty ** 

It was very common for the native Africans to sing as they worked. 
Women sang in chorus while pounding wheat, and men sang while 
hoeing the ground, or rowing a boat.'* Such songs had for their purpose 
rhythmic movement, like the rhythm of the march all the world over. 

This habit of singing to stimulate exertion was brought by the 
Negroes to the New World. Lafcadio Hearn in his Two Years in the 
French West Indies, says: ‘Formerly the work of cane-cutting re- 
sembled the march of an army—first advanced the cutlassers in line, 
naked to the waist; then the amareuses, the women who tied and car- 
ried, and behind these the Ka, the drum, with a paid crieur or crieuse, 
to lead the song, and lastly the black commandeur for general.” 
Referring to Negroes in the South, Booker T. Washington tells us 
that, “Wherever companies of Negroes were working together, in the 


* Quoted by Krehbiel, op. cit., p. 109. 
“Tbid., p. 26. 

* Tbid., pp. 47, 57. 

* Quoted ibid., p. 47. 


342 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

pad SMTA SINE MLa ati NSU c a ALD Aaa ans ents ue tk RAREST OE 
cotton fields and tobacco factories, on the levees and steamboats, on 
sugar plantations, and chiefly in the fervor of religious gatherings, 
these melodies sprang into life.” 

“The singular fact to be noticed here,” says Krehbiel, “is that the 
American Negro’s ‘spirituals’ were also his working songs, and the sig- 
nificance which this circumstance has with relation to their mood and 
mode. The spirituals could not have been thus employed had they 
been lugubrious in tone or sluggish in movement.” *° 

A common slave song heard on the steamboats was I’m Gaine to 
Alabamy, the words of which were as follows: 


1. “I’m gwine to Alabamy, Oh 
For to see my mammy, oh 


2. “She went from ole Virginny, 
And I’m her pickaninny 


3. “She lives on the Tombigbee, 
I wish I had her wid me 


4. “Now I’m a good big nigger, 
I reckon I won't git bigger. 


5. “But I’d like to see my mammy, 
Who lives in Alabamy.” 


Some of the Negro folk songs were satirical. In Africa the 
penchant for musical lampooning is quite marked, and has been culti- 
vated by a class of minstrels, found under various names in nearly every 
tribe, who have great powers of improvisation and, in both a facetious 
and serious vein, deliver their satires in song. The satirical song has 
been much in vogue on plantations in America where the Latin influ- 
ences were dominant, as in the Antilles and Louisiana. Because the 
Anglo-Saxon civilization is less tolerant of primitive institutions, the 
satirical song has not flourished in the Southern states. Some of the 
folk songs had a fine flavor of humor, of which the following is a 
sample: 

RUN, NIGGER, RUN! 


O some tell me that a nigger won’t steal, 

But I’ve seen a nigger in my corn-field; 

O run, nigger, run, for the patrol will catch you, 
O run, nigger, run, for ’tis almost day.” 


* Krehbiel, of. cit., p. 48. 
* Allen, op. cit., p. 89. 


NEGRO FOLK SONGS 343 


Concerning the influence of Negro folk songs on the music of the 
white race, Krehbiel says that three-fifths of the Negro songs he has 
studied ‘“‘contain the peculiarly propulsive rhythmical snap, or catch, 
which has several times been described as the basis of ragtime.” 1” 
fe says also that the rhythmical characteristic of the Negro songs 
has had a decided influence upon the dance-melodies of Spanish 
America."8 

“Tn conclusion, a word on the value of these Afro-American folk- 
songs as artistic material and their possible contribution to a national 
American school of music. In a large sense the value of a musical 
theme is wholly independent of its origin. But for a century past na- 
tional schools have been founded on folksongs, and it is more than 
likely, in spite of the present tendency toward ‘impressionism’ and other 
esthetic aberrations, that composers will continue to seek inspiration 
at its source. The songs which I have attempted to study are not only 
American because they are products of a people who have long been 
an integral part of the population of America, but also because they 
speak an idiom which, no matter what its origin, Americans have in- 
stinctively liked from the beginning and have never liked more than 
now. On this point Dr. Dvorak, one of the world’s greatest national- 
ists, is entitled to speak with authority. In an essay on ‘Music in 
America, which was printed in the Century Magazine for February, 
1895, he said: 

““A while ago I suggested that inspiration for truly national music 
might be derived from the negro melodies or Indian chants. I was led 
to take this view partly by the fact that the so-called plantation songs 
are indeed the most striking and appealing melodies that have been 
found on this side of the water, but largely by observation that this 
seems to be recognized, though often unconsciously, by most Americans. 
All races have their distinctive national songs, which they at once recog- 
nize as their own even if they have never heard them before... . It 
is a proper question to ask, what songs, then, belong to the American 
and appeal more strikingly to him than any others? What melody 
would stop him on the street if he were in a strange land, and make 
the home feeling well up within him, no matter how hardened he might 
be, or how wretchedly the tune were played? Their number, to be 
sure, seems to be limited. The most potent, as well as the most beautiful 


™ Krehbiel, of. cit., p. 48. 
* Tbid., p. 68. 


344 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


among them, according to my estimation, are certain of the so-called 
plantations melodies and slave songs, all of which are distinguished by 
unusual and subtle harmonies, the thing which I have found in no other 
songs but those of Scotland and Ireland.’ ”’ 1° 

* Krehbiel, op. cit., p. 153. 


CHAPTER 43 
MODERN NEGRO MUSIC; NEGRO DANCES 


Negro Music Since the Civil War—Negro Composers and Vocal Artists—The 
Jubilee Singers—The Famous “Blind Tom” and Other Instrumentalists— 
Ragtime and Jazz—The African Dance and Its Modification in America— 
Blending of the Dance with Religious Exercises 


INCE the Civil War the Negro has done very little in the way of 
composition of popular songs. The Negro Year Book for 1924 
gives a list of a dozen or so of Negro composers of songs, but none of 
them occupy a high rank. J. Rosamond Johnson, a native of Florida, 
was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and has com- 
posed a number of songs with distinct Negro characteristics. Several 
of his pieces were sung by May Irwin, Lillian Russell and Anna Held. 
Many Negroes have sung well. Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield of Mis- 
sissippi was educated in Philadelphia, and, because of her fine voice, 
attracted attention as a concert singer both in America and England 
and was widely known as “The Black Swan.” Madame Marie Selika 
of Chicago has appeared before cultivated audiences in cities of the 
United States and also in Paris and Berlin. The Paris Figaro and the 
Berlin Tageblatt paid high tributes to her vocal genius. Hamilton 
Hodges of Boston, Flora Batson of Providence, and half a dozen other 
Negroes have won respectable recognition as vocal artists. 

Numerous Negro glee clubs have attained to wide popularity, and 
among these the Fisk Jubilee Singers deserves special praise. J. B. 
Marsh, in his story of the Jubilee Singers, states that: ‘“They were at 
times without money to buy needed clothing; yet in three years they 
returned, bringing back with them nearly one hundred thousand dollars. 
They had been turned away from hotels and driven out of railway wait- 
ing rooms, because of their color; but they had been received with honor 
by the President of the United States; they had sung their slave songs 
before the Queen of Great Britain, and they had gathered as invited 
guests about the breakfast table of her Prime Minister. Their success 
was as remarkable as their mission was unique. Altogether these 
singers by their seven years of work raised one hundred and fifty 

345 


346 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


thousand dollars, and secured for their institution school books, paint- 
ings, and apparatus to the value of seven or eight thousand more. They 
sang in the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Switzer- 
land, and Germany. Since their time they have been much imitated, but 
hardly equalled, and never surpassed.” * 

In the line of instrumental music the Negroes have produced several 
men of genius of whom the most celebrated was Thomas Bethure, 
known as “Blind Tom,” born a slave near Columbus, Georgia, in 1849. 
At an early age he was noted as a musical prodigy. He could immedi- 
ately reproduce on the piano any piece of music he had heard. He 
traveled for years and gave concerts in all of the great cities of 
America and Europe. 

Joseph Henry Douglass, grandson of Frederick Douglass, and now 
instructor of music in Howard University, is a well known violin 
soloist, as is also Clarence White of Boston. There have been many 
Negro arrangers of band music and, though few of them have attained 
to fame, they have displayed much originality in combining various in- 
struments, and in introducing novel elements of rhythm. Altogether 
they have undoubtedly had a decided influence upon the musical taste 
and development of the American people. It is commonly believed that 
both ragtime, and jazz music, which has become so widely popular, had 
their origin among the Negro bands of New Orleans and other towns 
of the lower Mississippi. 

The native African, with his highly developed sense of rhythm, has 
a passionate fondness for dancing, and the music of his dances has the 
characteristic rhythm of his folk songs. Except the war dances, nearly 
all other African dances are described as orgies of sensuality. 

In transplanting itself to America the African dance has preserved 
much of its lasciviousness, especially in regions dominated by Spanish 
and French culture. The celebrated and fascinating Spanish Habanera, 
which originated in Havana, is said to have been a Negro product upon 
which graceful melodies were imposed.?. In Louisiana, the Antilles, and 
Spanish America the Roman Catholic church exercised a restrictive and 
reformative influence upon the Negro dances, and in Anglo-Saxon 
America the Negro dances were suppressed by the Protestant churches, 
especially the Methodist and Baptist denominations, at least to the ex- 
tent of eliminating the sensuous element. 

Lafcadio Hearn described a dance he witnessed in New Orleans in 


*Quoted by Brawley, Short History of the American Negro, p. 326. 
* Krehbiel, Afro-American Folk Songs, p. 114. 


MODERN NEGRO MUSIC; NEGRO DANCES 347 


which the Negroes “danced the Congo, and sang a purely African 
song to the accompaniment of a drygoods box beaten with a stick or 
bones, and a drum made by stretching a skin over a flour barrel. As 
for the dance—in which the women do not take their feet off the 
ground—it is as lascivious as is possible. The men dance very differ- 
ently, like savages leaping in the air.’ * 

The tendency of the various religious denominations in America to 
discountenance and prohibit the native African dance caused the plan- 
tation darkies to introduce into their religious exercises some of the 
elements of the African dance. The Negro “shouts,” so celebrated in 
the Lower South in the slave days, were generally accompanied by danc- 
ing, as the following description will illustrate: 

“The true ‘shout’ takes place on Sundays, or on ‘praise nights,’ 
through the week, and either in the praise-house or in some cabin in 
which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than 
half the population of a plantation is gathered together. Let it be the 
evening, and a light-wood fire burns red before the door of the house 
and on the hearth. For some time one can hear, though at a good dis- 
tance, the vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder or 
of the brother who has a gift that way and is not ‘on the back seat’— 
a phrase the interpretation of which is ‘under the censure of the church 
authorities for bad behavior’—and at regular intervals one hears the 
elder ‘deaconing’ a hymnbook hymn, which is sung two lines at a time 
and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably 
melancholy. 

“But the benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meet- 
ing is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely dressed young 
men, grotesquely half-clad field hands—the women generally with gay 
handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with short skirts—boys 
with tattered shirts and men’s trousers, young girls bare-footed, all 
stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the ‘sperichil’ is struck 
up begin first walking, and by and by shuffling around, one.after the 
other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the pro- 
gression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion which agitates 
the entire shouter and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Some- 
times they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus 
of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is also sung by the 
dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best 
singers and of the tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to 

? Quoted ibid., p. 125. 


348 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


‘base’ the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands 
together or on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely energetic, 
and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monoto- 
nous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the 
praise-house.”’ + 

The modern tango is African in name and motif, and the turkey trot, 
though not African in name, is not less a descendant of the lascivious 
African dance.” ® 


“The Nation, May 30, 1867. 
° Krehbiel, op. cit., p. 114. 


CHAPTER 44 
NEGRO DRAMA, PAINTING, AND SCULPTURE 


Ira Aldridge and Charles Gilpin as Dramatists—Henry O. Tanner, E. W. Scott, 
and Albert Smith as Painters—Edmonia Lewis and Meta Warrick as 
Sculptors 


S yet the Negroes have no outstanding figure in the theatrical 

world. Several of them, however, have had successful careers 
on the stage. One of these is Ira Frederick Aldridge, said to have been 
born in Maryland about 1810, who accompanied Edmund Kean to 
England and who became a popular actor there, playing the part of 
Othello. He received decorations from European crowned heads. 

Several years ago a Negro, Charles Gilpin, successfully played a 
star part in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. The leading char- 
acter of this drama is a Negro who is represented as an ex-Pullman 
porter and ex-convict, who escapes to the West Indies, and there sets 
himself up as a person of royalty among the natives. When his decep- 
tion begins to be discovered, he flees to the woods, where he is over- 
come with superstitious fears. The play is a psychological study de- 
signed to reveal the supposed superstitious nature of the Negro. The 
critics generally agreed that Gilpin played the part well. 

Robert Allen Cole (Bob Cole), a native of Georgia, 1868-1911, 
won success and reputation in New York as an organizer and actor of 
comic plays depicting Negro life. He was also a composer of comic 
songs. 

Several Negroes have taken part in photoplays, and others, mostly 
women, have won popularity as dramatic readers. 

The most celebrated Negro painter is Henry O. Tanner, a native of 
Ohio. He studied in Paris and achieved distinction as a painter of 
pictures representing scenes from the Bible, such as “The Holy Family,” 
“Christ Walking on the Sea,” “Christ at the Home of Lazarus,” etcetera. 
Several of his productions have found a place in the Luxembourg gal- 
lery, and at various times his paintings have been exhibited in the art 
galleries of the United States. He won money awards and gold medals 
for his exhibition of paintings at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, 
and the St. Louis Exposition in 1905. 

349 


350 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





Edward William Scott of Indiana manifested at an early age a taste 
for painting, and, after a course of training at the Chicago Art Insti- 
tute, went to Paris and studied at the Julian Academy and under Henry 
©. Tanner. Several of his paintings have been exhibited in the Salon 
des Beaux Arts at Toquet; one of his paintings, “La Pauvre Voisine,”’ 
was purchased by the Argentine Republic. He has done some mural 
decorative work on public buildings in Indianapolis, Chicago, and other 
cities. The Negro Year Book says: “He is interesting himself in 
Negro subjects and is doing in painting what Dunbar has done in 
verse. He is now spending considerable time in the South painting 
Negro types.” : 

No painter of African descent seems to have done anything notable 
in the interpretation of nature. Sir Harry H. Johnston thinks that the 
Negro lacks feeling for landscape.* 

Albert A. Smith, born in 1896, has shown conspicuous merit as 
an etcher of portraits, and has won deserved recognition. In 1911 he 
was awarded, by the DeWitt Clinton High School of New York, a 
scholarship in the Ethical Culture Art School. In 1915 he entered the 
National Academy of Design, and received several medals for clever 
work. In 1918 he enlisted in the World War and served until July of 
the year following, when he reéntered the National Academy of De- 
sign and won a prize for a painting from life. His best work has been 
in etchings, and he has just completed a series of portraits of noted 
Negroes, including Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker 
Washington, Toussaint Louverture, etcetera. His most recent work is 
an etching of Alexander S. Pushkin, a Russian poet of African ancestry. 

In the art of sculpture two Negro women have attained prominence. 
Edmonia Lewis of New York attracted attention in 1865 by a bust of 
Robert Gould Shaw. Soon thereafter she went to Italy, where she 
continues to reside. Her works include “The Freedwoman,” ‘The 
Death of Cleopatra,” “The Marriage of Hiawatha,” etcetera, and busts 
of John Brown, Charles Sumner, Lincoln, and Longfellow. 

Meta Warrick (Mrs. Fuller), of Massachusetts, studied in Paris 
and is said to have been admired by the great sculptor Rodin. Her 
works lean towards the gruesome and the gloomy, and bear such titles 
as “The Wretched,” “The Silent Sorrow,” and “Carrying the Dead 
Body.” 


*The Negro in the New World, p. 426. 


CHAPTER 4s 
THE NEGRO PRESS 


Representative Newspapers and Magazines—Contrast between Northern and 
Southern Papers—Over-emphasis of the Negro’s Grievances by the Negro 
Press—Obligation of Both the Negro and the White Press to Bring About 
Better Race Relations 


| BRS the Civil War there had been started at various times about 
twenty-four periodicals published by Negroes. Among these, only 
one survived and attained to any notable success and that was the North 
Star published by Frederick Douglass at Rochester, New York. The 
motive of Douglass in launching this paper was to arouse interest in 
the Negro and especially to remove the prejudices against him. He 
believed that a well-conducted press in the hands of the Negro would 
convince the white people of the Negro’s capacity. The North Star, 
later entitled the Frederick Douglass Paper, became an effective force 
in the movement for the abolition of slavery. 

At the present time there are about 500 Negro newspapers, thirty- 
one magazines, eighty-two school journals, two college fraternity maga- 
zines, and several periodicals of fraternal orders, of business, of music, 
ELC; 

The leading monthly magazine is the Crisis, organ of the A. A. A. P., 
published in New York, which has a circulation of about 70,000. 

The Journal of Negro History is a monthly publication of high 
standing, devoted, as its title implies, to historical research, and to the 
dissemination of information in regard to the achievements of the 
Negro race throughout the world. It is issued under the patronage 
of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The edi- 
tor of the journal is Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D., who, in addition to 
his work as editor, has written several very valuable books dealing 
with the life of the Negro in America. The journal has just rounded 
out its first decade of existence, and in this short time it has made an 
immense contribution to the general store of knowledge concerning 
Negro life and achievement. 

*Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States, p. 1. 
351 


352 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


A journal which renders a very unique service to the Negroes of 
the United States is Opportunity, published monthly by the Department 
of Research and Investigations of the National Urban League. Under 
the editorial direction of Charles S. Johnson the magazine has attained 
to a high degree of excellence. It concerns itself with matters of con- 
temporary interest, and covers very much the same field for the Negroes 
that the Outlook or the Independent covers for the white people. It 
contrasts with the Crisis in emphasizing opportunities instead of griev- 
ances. Its contributed articles would do credit to any magazine and 
have to do with Negro poets, painters, musicians, dramatists, and 
authors, and such problems as Negro migration, education, health, recre- 
ation, religious activities, and the like. In short, it portrays the Negro’s 
part in the world’s work in such a way as to stimulate hope, aspiration, 
and pride. 

The oldest magazine published in the interest of the Negro is the 
Southern Workman, founded in 1872 by Samuel C. Armstrong and pub- 
lished monthly by the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. 
Its original object was to promote the interests of the undeveloped races, 
and, for a long time, it contained much matter pertaining to the Ameri- 
can Indians, but in recent years it has come to deal almost exclusively 
with the American Negro. Its special field is education, particularly 
education for agriculture and the mechanic arts, but it publishes numer- 
ous articles covering all sorts of activities in the line of cultural uplift. 
The magazine has been of incalculable benefit to the Negro and the 
Indian. 

The best known and most influential newspapers in the North are the 
Guardian of Boston; the Age, News, Messenger, Crusader, and Negro 
World of New York City; the Defender, Whip, Enterprise, and Broad 
Ax of Chicago; the Freedman of Indianapolis; the Courier and the 
American of Pittsburgh; and the Tribune of Philadelphia. 

Among the outstanding newspapers of the South are the Afro- 
American of Baltimore; the Western Review of Little Rock, Arkansas; 
the Florida Sentinel, of Jacksonville; the Savannah Tribune, of Sav- 
annah, Georgia; the Louisville Leader, of Louisville, Kentucky; the 
Negro Advocate, of New Orleans; the St. Louts Independent; the 
Gate City Argus, Greensboro, North Carolina; the Black Dispatch, 
Oklahoma City; the Southern Indicator, Columbia, South Carolina; the 
Memphis Times; the City Times of Galveston; the Houston Observer; 
and the Richmond Planet. 

In several respects the Negro papers of the North and South stand 


THE NEGRO PRESS 353 


in sharp contrast. The papers of the North are more absorbed in 
politics, while the papers of the South give relatively more space to items 
of local interest, such as those pertaining to social functions, religious 
and fraternal activities, schools, health, and business. 

The Northern papers are more radical and more bitter than those 
of the South. With a few exceptions they are extremely partisan, and 
discuss political issues, especially those concerning conditions in the 
South, with such a passion as to destroy candor and the capacity to 
form a judgment related to the facts. Their attitude towards the white 
South is that of frenzied hatred and vengefulness. They see in the 
Southern white man only a monster of iniquity who deserves condign 
punishment for his sins against the Negro. ‘They profess to believe 
that the white South is endeavoring, with might and main, to reduce 
the Negro again to a state of slavery. They denounce very justly the 
lynchings and other injustices to which the Southern Negroes are sub- 
jected, but scorn to credit the white South with any worthy endeavor 
or achievement in behalf of the colored population. Any evidence of 
improvement in the status of the Southern Negro seems to be unwel- 
come to them as diminishing the fuel for the flame of malice. The 
Northern press seeks, above everything else, to inspire the Southern 
Negroes with a hatred of their white neighbors, and to a large extent it 
has succeeded in doing so. Consequently it looks with disfavor upon 
the movement for cooperation in the South between the two races. 
The rabid Northern press needs to learn that in cultivating hatred be- 
tween the races in the South it is doing the same for the races in the 
North. 

The Negro press concerns itself to an irrational extent with the col- 
ored man’s grievances against the white man. The Negro, to be sure, 
has real grievances and plenty of them, but harping upon them has 
become such a habit of the Negro press that very often the Negro editor 
writes in vague generalities about injustices and outrages of which he 
has no real knowledge, and which in fact do not exist. 

One of the most widespread and frequent complaints among Negro 
editorial writers is that the white press takes notice of Negroes only 
who commit crime.2. The white press is undoubtedly too much given 
to exploiting crime, and it is a fact that some papers give more promi- 
nence to crime by a Negro than by a white man, but it is not at all 
true that the white press overlooks the Negro who distinguishes himself 
in something other than crime. The white press in all sections of the 


* Kerlin, The Voice of the Negro, pp. 3-4. 


354 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


country is very quick to discover and applaud Negroes who display 
any unusual talent or render any meritorious service. From Frederick 
Douglass to W. E. B. DuBois the white press has been the open door 
for the recognition of Negroes of merit. Rarely has any Negro won 
recognition for meritorious achievement save through the white press. 

A more discriminating attitude on the part of the Negro press 
toward the grievances which exist would have a greater tendency to 
correct them. A man who habitually shouts at the top of his voice will 
find that it will only squeak when the occasion comes for it to thunder. 

Instead of representing the white man as ever striving to keep the 
Negro in a state of degradation, it would be more wholesome for the 
Negro masses and more in accordance with the truth, if the Negro 
press would dwell on the fact that in America the Negro has been 
given an opportunity and a helping hand not accorded to him in any 
other part of the world and that the rapid progress of the Negro in the 
United States is a tribute to the white man’s good will and humanitariar 
spirit. Despite his handicaps the Negro in the United States has more 
grounds for gratitude toward the white man than for animosity. 

It is much to be desired in the interest of both races that they un- 
derstand each other better and draw nearer together in sympathy and 
in common quest of what is good for all concerned; and the obligation 
belongs alike to the Negro and the white press to bring about this 
better understanding and relationship. 


PART SEVEN 
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM 


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CHAPTER 46 
THE NATURELORW HE PROBEEM 


Approach from the Standpoint of History, Biology, Anthropology, and Psychology 
—The Author’s Personal Observations of the Negro in the United States— 
Definition of Race—The Problem of Harmonizing the Interests of Two 
Unlike Races in the Same Territory and under the Same Government 


AM drawing to a close of my twenty years’ study of the Negro 

races. At the beginning of this study I was impressed with the 
fact that an understanding of the Negro problem in the United States 
would not be possible without a study of the Negro in his original 
habitats, and in regions to which he had been transplanted. I have, 
therefore, devoted several volumes of my work to Negro history. In 
addition to the light thrown upon the Negro problem from the stand- 
point of history, I have found it necessary to make excursions into 
biology, anthropology, eugenics, and psychology, ali of which sciences 
have made valuable contributions to our understanding of racial prob- 
lems within the past twenty years. And fortunately I have been able 
to supplement my knowledge of the Negro obtained from books by 
personal observation of him in all sections of the United States. 

I spent my youth in North Carolina, where the Negroes constituted 
a very large and important factor in the life of the whites; and, since 
attaining to manhood, I have had opportunity to know the Negro 
in the North and West through my residence in New York, Massa- 
chusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Oklahoma. 
Up to my eighteenth year the only domestic servants I knew were 
Negroes. I remember with distinctness many of the cooks, nurses, 
butlers, farm hands, and wood-choppers employed by my father. I 
also remember several Negro cooks and nurses employed in my own 
home. I have rented land and houses to Negroes, and sold land 
and houses to them. I have chopped cotton with Negroes on a farm 
owned by my uncle, and, while working in a grocery story, I used 
to accompany an old Negro truckman to and from the railway sta- 
tion to assist him in loading and unloading barrels of molasses, boxes 
of bacon, and sacks of flour. I have played with Negro children and 

357 


358 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


danced to Negro music. On various occasions I have ridden beside 
Negroes in wagons, carriages, and railway trains. I have sat beside 
them in the classrooms, and have had them sit as pupils in my own 
classes. I have sat beside them at the theaters, and even at the same 
table with them on board ships, in restaurants, and at public banquets. 
I have lectured to Negro audiences, and often listened to Negro 
preachers, teachers, and campaign orators. And lastly I have served 
with Negroes on the Inter-Racial Commission of Oklahoma. 

So far as my personal acquaintance with the Negroes is concerned, 
I feel friendly toward them. The great majority of those I have 
known have been Negroes of very superior virtues, and for some 
of them I have an abiding respect and affection. I count as one of 
my dearest friends, and as one of the most beautiful Christian types 
of men, an old Negro slave who belonged to my grandfather. I have 
known a great many more good Negroes than bad ones, and I feel 
very thankful to Providence that I grew up in a community the life 
of which was interwoven with that of the blacks. The ties of affec- 
tion which have bound me to Negro servants, and the splendid loyalty 
which has characterized their behavior toward me and mine, are 
very precious memories. Because of their childish naturalness and 
originality of thought and action, they have been a source of absorb- 
ing interest, of wholesome animation, good cheer, and lively humor. 
Whatever else may be said of the Negroes they are certainly the 
most interesting race in the world. And there are few Southern 
people of my age whose lives have not been brightened by Negro 
associations and memories. I cannot but deem it a misfortune for 
anyone not to have had the charm and picturesqueness of the Negro 
as a background to his life. 

My general attitude toward the Negro being one of kindliness, I 
hope I have not been unduly biased in the interpretation of his his- 
tory. I would certainly feel much mortified to realize that I had con- 
sciously colored any fact or circumstance to his disparagement. 

The Negro problem is only one aspect of the ever present fact of 
racial conflict, which has been the chief factor in all of the great 
wars that have scourged mankind, and which is now the greatest 
obstacle to world peace. Anthropology teaches us that exterminating 
wars began on our earth as soon as mankind differentiated into races. 
In paleolithic times the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon races, which 
flourished in Europe, seem to have been completely exterminated by 
later invaders. And in neolithic times, when the Nordic, Alpine, 


THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 359 


and Mediterranean races came to divide the territory of Europe, there 
was a continuous inter-racial war, with the fortunes of the combat 
shifting from one race to the other. In the metal ages, and through- 
out the historic period to the present, race wars have marked all 
of the great revolutions of history. The Babylonians’ history is the 
story of warfare with the Elamites, Kassites, Arabs, and Syrians. 
The history of the Assyrians is a story of warfare with the Armenians, 
Medes, Chaldeans, Aramzans, Philistines, Damascans, Israelites, 
Syrians, and Egyptians. The Egyptian history is a story of warfare 
with the Ethiopians, Libyans, Palestinians, Arabs, Assyrians, Persians, 
Greeks, Romans, and the modern British. Europe’s history is a story 
of conquest of the Greeks by the Romans, of the Romans by the 
Nordics, of the overruning of the Nordics, Alpines, and Mediter- 
raneans by the Asiatic Saracens and Huns, and of conflict between 
the Protestant races of the North and the Catholic races of the South. 
And our contemporary history is a story of the greatest of all racial 
wars, ignited by friction between the Slav and Teuton in Southeastern 
Europe. If it be argued that these wars have been national as well 
as racial, I admit the fact, but maintain that to a greater extent they 
have been fundamentally racial, for the reason that all nations have 
had their origin in race segregation, and that they are still everywhere 
to a great extent bound together by racial sentiment. 

Is it not high time we understand the race problem? Are we 
to stumble on forever, with our eyes shut, like the blind man tapping 
his way with a stick, when we might just as well look ahead and 
keep away from the precipices? 

In any attempt to understand the race problem it is necessary, first 
of all, to have a clear idea of what is meant by the word “race.” 

In common usage we apply the term “race” to a group of people 
who differ in either physical or cultural characteristics. 

For instance, we speak not only of the black people of Africa 
as a race, but also of the English race, the Irish race, and the Scottish 
race. In one case we have in mind physical differences, and in the 
other only cultural differences. The English, Irish, and Scotch are 
people of mixed physical characteristics, but they have so much in 
common that they are hardly distinguishable in appearance, and would 
be known as a single race except for geographical separation and dif- 
ferences of culture. 

Now, in studying the race problem it is of capital importance to 
kcep in mind the two different senses in which the word “race” is 


360 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


used, In the discussions in this book I use the term “race’’ to mean 
a group of people who differ physically and visibly from other groups. 
The contact of races differing in this sense always gives rise to a 
serious race problem. Even in the case of groups differing only in 
culture there are often very serious conflicts, for when the same 
race belongs to different political divisions there is a development of 
rival cultures, which often lead to animosities and war. 

However, when races differ only in culture, the problem is very 
different from that which arises when they differ physically. The 
conflict of races differing only in culture is generally solved by con- 
quest, assimilation, and amalgamation; whereas the conflict of races 
differing physically is solved or remains unsolved according to the 
degree of the differences. Wherever races of salient visible differ- 
ences occupy the same territory, or compete for it, the result is per- 
petual strife, often leading to the extermination of one or the other. 

It is impossible to determine a priori to what extent, or if at all, 
any two races will assimilate and amalgamate. We can only ascer- 
tain their assimilability when we see them in contact, and observe 
their behavior. However, history furnishes us with so many instances 
of racial contact that we are able to know without question that 
certain widely contrasting races do not blend, or do so in a manner 
which prevents complete assimilation. We learn from history that 
races differing as widely as the white, black, brown, and yellow tend 
to occupy distinct segregated areas of the earth, and that they have 
never cooperated harmoniously under the same government. On the 
other hand, history teaches us that certain races which differ but 
slightly in physical features intermarry, and assimilate more or less 
freely, for example, the Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean types of 
Europe. Here, however, where there is scarcely any conscious racial 
difference, the three types tend so strongly to marry within their 
respective groups that they have predominated in a marked degree 
in the same territory for 10,000 or more years. The presence of 
10,000,000 Negroes in the United States offers exactly the same kind 
of problem as would be offered if we had in our nation 10,000,000 
Japanese or Chinese centering on the Pacific coast, or 10,000,000 
Hindus centering on the North Atlantic coast. History furnishes us 
no instance of a satisfactory solution of such a problem. The Negro 
problem is especially interesting and important for the reason that it is 
one of a type for which human experience has thus far found no 
solution. 


THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 301 


A realization of these facts should caution us against lending too 
much credulity to the numerous prophets among us who claim to have 
discovered a solution to the Negro problem. 

The problem is simply this: To find a means of harmonizing two 
races as unlike as the Negro and the Caucasian in the same territory 
and under the same government. 

Let us now review the various schemes and programs which have 
been brought forward as a possible solution of this great problem. 


CHAPTER 47 
AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY 


Argument That Races Are Equal—Standards for Measuring the Superiority of 
One Race over Another in Physical Appearance—Difference in Ideals of 
Esthetic Values—Question of the Mental Equality of Races—Humanitarians 
and Men of Science Who Uphold the Doctrine of Race Equality 


HE proposition to solve the race problem in the United States 
by amalgamation is one around which most of the other proposed 
solutions revolve, and therefore it should have first consideration. 

The advocates of amalgamation assume that all races are equal, i. e., 
given the same opportunities they will attain to equal culture. They 
therefore regard any claim of one race to superiority over another 
as merely race prejudice, which all enlightened people should outgrow. 

Before we can properly weigh the arguments for and against 
amalgamation, we must answer the question, Are all of the races of 
mankind equal? And in attempting to answer this question we must 
set up some generally accepted standard for measuring racial values. 
As a matter of fact, are there any such standards? Is there any 
agreement among men of science as to what physical or mental en- 
dowments are most valuable? How can we maintain that a white skin 
is superior to a black one, a Roman nose superior to a flat one, or a 
thin lip superior to a thick one? In other words, in the matter of 
esthetics, are there any absolute standards applicable to races? 

An answer to the question has been attempted by Edmond Burke 
in his essay On the Sublime and the Beautiful. He contends that the 
physical constitution of man is such that certain stimuli to the eye, 
ear, and touch are intrinsically pleasing, and other stimuli displeas- 
ing. For instance, a smooth surface is more agreeable than a rough 
one, a curved line more agreeable than a zigzag one, certain color 
combinations are agreeable and others irritating, etc. Therefore, cer- 
tain forms, colors, textures, etc., are intrinsically and universally su- 
perior in esthetic values to others. If we accept Burke’s general 
principle we may be justified in asserting that certain human features 
are superior to others. For example, among all races there seems to 

362 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY 363 


be a preference for individuals having the lighter color of skin. 
Throughout Africa the lighter colored blacks are preferred to the 
dark, as is evidenced by the fact that everywhere the ruling or 
aristocratic class is observed to be of lighter hue than the masses. 
Also among the brown and yellow races the ruling castes are observed 
to be lighter than the common people.?, Even among the white races 
the lighter hued seem to be preferred to the darker. The upper 
classes among the Greeks and Romans were of a fairer type than the 
slave and, in all of the present races of white people, the lighter 
types predominate over the darker in the higher walks of life. We 
have only to look around us in our own country to perceive that in 
the mating of young people the fairer types of women are preferred 
to the darker, and that painters and fiction-writers generally choose 
the blonde type as the ideal. Among the Negro populace of Haiti, 
Jamaica, Santo Domingo, and the United States, the preference for 
the mulatto in marriage, and the superiority which the lighter color 
gives to the mulatto, are obvious to the most careless observer. 

There seems to be a tendency among all peoples to associate black 
with evil and this tendency accounts in a large measure for the preju- 
dice against the black race and for the notion that the black race 
is inferior. Dr. Owen A. R. Berkeley-Hill in a recent paper read 
before the Indian Psycho-analytical Society of India, says: “The 
yellow man distinguishes himself from the brown, the brown from 
the black; no one among these wants to be black. One suggested ex- 
planation of the idea is the relation between ‘blackness’ and ‘evil,’— 
among all races of whatever color ‘blackness’ has this connotation. It 
has been and is associated with ‘witchcraft,’ ‘devils,’ ‘sins,’ ‘bad luck,’ 
and ‘all the other distressing and horrible aspects of human experience.’ 
The association is as common among brown or black people as among 
yellow or white.” ... 

“When we turn to the so-called ‘white’ races of Europe and Amer- 
ica, we find ‘blackness’ playing an immense part in association with 
devils, witchcraft, and the like. One need only turn to the book by 
Miss Margaret Murray, ‘The Witch Cult in Western Europe,’ to find 
a mass of evidence in support of this contention.” * 

it seems quite a tenable judgment, therefore, on zsthetic grounds, 

*Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. 1, pp. 133, 195; Vol. 2, pp. 123, 207, 235. 

*Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 369; Deniker, The Races of 
Man, pp. 384, 387. 

*Quoted in Opportunity, Oct., 1925. 


364 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 








that a fair complexion is superior to a dark one. And a similar line 
of argument would seem to justify the conclusion that other features 
of the human physiognomy have likewise unequal values. 

Nevertheless, while all races may prefer certain facial features to 
others, their preference is generally manifested only within the circle 
of their respective members. Every race prefers its own general 
type. Among the Hottentots, whose noses are very flat, a mother 
who happens to have a child with a prominent nose will artificially 
flatten it. Every race has its standard of beauty, which no doubt 
conforms to zsthetic principles, but the individuals of one race are 
not generally attracted by the individuals of any other race having 
features of a widely different type. Consciousness of kind binds 
people of like type into a sympathetic union, and, at the same time, 
awakens in them a social aversion to people of a different type. If 
some black people in the United States prefer whites in marriage, 
it is on account of the superior culture of the latter, and not on 
account of the appeal made by a white skin. But for the difference 
in culture of the two races the Negroes would prefer mating with 
their own kind, although they would prefer the lighter type of their | 
own kind. 

Thus, while on esthetic grounds a certain kind of features of the 
human physiognomy may be adjudged superior to another kind, it is 
not a tenable theory that the features characteristic of one race are 
superior to those of another race, for the reason that consciousness of 
kind gives a separate standard for each race, and there is no arbiter 
between these conflicting standards. 

Passing to the question of the mental equality of races, we find 
a wide difference of opinion among both scientists and laymen. The 
notion of race inequality runs through all history, and not until the 
latter part of the eighteenth century was there any tendency to dis- 
card it. The ancient Egyptians regarded it as profane to eat with 
the Hebrews.* The Greeks and Romans despised all foreigners as 
barbarians. Throughout history each race has considered itself superior 
to any other. 

The idea of racial equality began to find champions during the 
Revolution in France, when the doctrine of equality found enthusi- 
astic favor among the French masses. Brissot, a member of the French 
Assembly, in discussing the color question as pertaining to Saint 
Domingue, expressed the opinion that the Negroes were equal to the 

* Genesis XLIII, v. 32. 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY 36s 





whites, and he therefore advocated civil rights for the Negroes, and 
intermarriage of the two races.5 The commissioners sent by the 
French Assembly to Saint Domingue in 1792, especially one Sonthonax, 
were believers in race equality. In 1806, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 
of Gottingen University, one time court physician to the King of Eng- 
land, maintained that the races of mankind were equally endowed. 
He said in reference to the capacity of the Negro, that “there is 
no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so dis- 
tinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original ca- 
pacity for culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most 
civilized nations of the earth as the Negro.’ ® 

The English opinion on the question of race equality seems to 
have followed that of John Locke, who held that the mind of an 
infant was a tabula rasa, the same in all individuals without specific 
tendencies of any consequence. 

In 1827, Lord Macaulay, writing in the Edinburg Review, expressed 
his opinion as follows: “We entertain little doubt that when the laws 
which created a distinction between the races shall be completely 
abolished, a very few generations will mitigate the prejudices which 
those laws have created and which they still maintain. ... At that 
time, the black girl, who as a slave would have attracted a white 
lover, will, when her father gives her a good education and can 
leave her a hundred thousand dollars, find no difficulty in procuring a 
white husband.” 

Mr. Lyell, an Englishman who visited the United States in 1849, 
held views similar to those of Macaulay. He said: “This incident 
(the runaway marriage of a white man with a mulatto seamstress) 
is important from many points of view, and especially by proving to 
what an extent the amalgamation of the two races would take place, 
if it were not checked by artificial prejudices and the most jealous 
and severe enactment of law.” ? 

John Stuart Mill remarked that “of all vulgar modes of escaping 
from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences 
on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversi- 
ties of conduct and character to inherent natural differences’; and 


“Dowd, The Negro in America, Vol. 1, p. 3. 

* Beitrige zur Naturgeschichte, p. 312. He mentions Benjamin Banniker, 
Phyllis Wheatley, and a midwife in French Switzerland as examples of Negro 
perfectibility, 

7 Second Visit to the United States, New York, 1849, Vol. 2, p. 216. 


306 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Thomas Buckle, who believed that environment was the determining 
factor in race development, quoted in his History of Civilization, with 
evident approval, the above remark by Mill. 

During the anti-slavery agitation in the United States a number 
of enthusiastic friends of the Negro felt firmly convinced that there 
was no difference between the Negro and white man except in color 
of skin. 

William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, William E. Channing, 
and a host of their disciples believed that the Negro was in every 
way equal to the white man; and, during the Reconstruction period 
in the South, nearly all of the carpet-baggers, missionaries, and agents 
of the Freedmen’s Bureau, had as their chief aim the enforcement 
of social and civil equality among the whites and blacks. In 1864 
D. G. Croley published a book on Miscegenation, in which he advo- 
cated not only the amalgamation of whites and blacks, but of whites 
and Chinese, and of all other races. Theodore Tilton, editor of the 
Independent, could see no objection whatever to the amalgamation of 
races, and his utterances on the subject practically amounted to 
advocacy. 

The above-named champions of the idea of race equality were in- 
fluenced to a great extent by the humanitarian sentiment which began 
to sweep over the civilized world towards the close of the eighteenth 
century. None of them had the advantage of scientific data or prin- 
ciples to guide them, and their opinions grew out of their high ideals, 
and were supported merely by their general understanding of human 
nature. 

In more recent years, a vast amount of new knowledge has come 
to light through the development of the sciences of biology, anthro- 
pology, psychology, and sociology, and the new science of eugenics. 
More complete and more accurate data have been collected pertain- 
ing to the origin, history, and character of races, and important dis- 
coveries have been made concerning human heredity. 

This new body of knowledge, however, has not led to any unity 
of opinion among scientific men in regard to the question of race 
equality. Perhaps the stronger tendency among men of science has 
been to swing back to the view that the races of mankind are un- 
equally endowed, but many authorities believe that the evidence avail- 
able points in exactly the opposite direction. 

The most celebrated of the more recent champions of race equality 
is the French author, Jean Finot. In his book, Race Prejudice, he 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY — 367 
takes the ground that racial intermixture has gone on for so long a 
time that there are now no distinct races on the earth; and no differ- 
ence in the mental capacity of the groups of people which we call 
races.°® 

He cites the mulattoes of the island of Tristan da Cunha as an 
exceptionally beautiful type due to the crossing of the European and 
the Negro. “It is pleasant,’ he says, “to see that the crossbreeds 
of Java are superior to the Malays, and that the Brazilians of the 
province of St. Paul, who are the progeny of Portuguese and in- 
digenous tribes, viz., the Cerigos and the Gaynazes, excel physio- 
logically, intellectually and morally.” ° 

Now, it is not clear to my mind how the crossing of two stocks 
can result in a superior type “physiologically, intellectually and mor- 
ally” if the two were equal to start with, and, if it is a fact, as 
claimed by Finot, that some crossings result in highly beneficial re- 
sults, surely then the kind of crossings of human beings, as of cattle 
or chickens, must be of the greatest importance instead of being a 
matter of indifference. 

G. Spiller, organizer of the Universal Races Congress, read a 
paper at the first session on “The Problem of Race Equality,” in 
which he said: “We are, then, under the necessity of concluding that 
an impartial investigator would be inclined to look upon the various 
important peoples of the world as, to all mtents and purposes, essen- 
tially equals in intellect, enterprise, morality, and physique. 

“Race prejudice forms a species belonging to a flourishing genus. 
Prejudices innumerable exist based on callousness, ignorance, misun- 
derstanding, economic rivalry, and, above all, on the fact that our 
customs are dear to us, but appear ridiculous and perverse to all who 
do not sympathetically study them. Nation looks down on nation, 
class on class, religion on religion, sex on sex, and race on race. It 
is a melancholy spectacle which imaginative insight into the lives and 
conditions of others should remove.” *° 

L. L. Zamenhof of Poland, the originator of the international lan- 
guage known as Esperanto, in his paper read at the Universal Races 

* Without desiring to be understood as opposing Finot’s general conclusions, 
I wish to point out an inconsistency in his reasoning. While claiming that the 
races are equal he admits that race crossings result in an improvement in the 
stock, and that the superior individuals of every country are the result of cross- 
breeding. See p. 163. 


°Finot, Race Prejudice, p. 161. 
* Proceedings of the Universal Races Congress, I9II, p. 35. 


368 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Congress, touched upon the subject of race equality as follows: “When, 
in the course of time, the negroes have lost all traces of their for- 
mer barbarism and slavery, when they have attained a high degree of 
culture and given the world a number of great men, this unconscious 
disdain and antipathy will be turned into respect, and we shall no 
longer feel the slightest aversion for the black skin and the thick lips 
of the negro." 

“Tf we find an immense difference between the mind of some race 
in the interior of Africa and that of a European race, we must seek 
the cause not in any difference of natural qualities, but in the diversity 
of civilization and political conditions. Give the Africans, without 
any mingling of rancour or oppression, a high and humane civiliza- 
tion, and you will find that their mental level will not differ from 
ours. Abolish the whole of our civilization, and our mind will sink 
to the level of that of an African cannibal. It is not a difference of 
mentality in the race, but a difference of imstruction.” ** 

John Oakesmith, a brilliant English scholar, seems to agree with 
Finot in the equality of races. At any rate he does not consider that 
the racial factor has counted for anything in the growth of English 
civilization. In his book, Race and Nationality, he argues that Eng- 
lish culture has been an indigenous evolutionary growth, and that the 
racial composition of the population has not been of any consequence. 

Other European exponents of the doctrine of race equality are 
J. M. Robertson, author of The Germans, and Introduction to English 
Politics, and Emile Durkheim, author of many philosophical and socio- 
logical treatises. 

On this side of the Atlantic the doctrine of race equality has very 
able and numerous champions among our present day men of science. 

Robert H. Lowie, curator of anthropology of the American 
Museum of Natural History, in his book, Culture and Ethnology, dis- 
cusses among other things culture and race, and, in speaking of the 
range of values in each racial group, says: ‘“‘Now it is obvious that, 
where the number of individuals considered is small, excessive values 
are less likely to occur than in a larger series. In a gathering of a 
hundred men, we are not likely to find a man above 6 feet 6 inches 
in height ; the average stature of all New Yorkers will probably not be 
any greater than that of one hundred men selected at random, yet in 
the entire city we shall find a number of individuals of gigantic 


% Proceedings of the Universal Races Congress, I9II, p. 427. 
* Tbid., p, 428. 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY — 369 





stature. When we apply this fact to our special problem we see at 
once that extraordinary deviations from the norm cannot be expected 
to occur in a tribe of 500 or even 5,000, while among the vast popula- 
tions of India, China or the Caucasian countries of America and 
Europe such favorable variants are likely to occur with consider- 
able absolute frequency. These variations, as has already been sug- 
gested, need not even be excessive to produce significant cultural re- 
sults. Again, we may urge the principle of minimal variations. A 
little greater energy or administrative talent may be just sufficient to 
found a powerful state; a slightly greater amount of logical consistency 
may lead to the foundation of geometrical reasoning or of a philo- 
sophical system; a somewhat keener interest, above the purely utilitarian 
one, in surrounding nature may give a remarkable impetus to the de- 
velopment of science. 

“Now this puts an entirely different construction on the facts. 
Assume that racial differences are at the bottom of some of the observed 
cultural differences. This fact would not necessarily mean, then, that 
the average ability of the inferior races is less, but only that extreme 
variations of an advantageous character occur less frequently among 
them. This, for example, is the view taken by Professor Eugene 
Fischer, the physical anthropologist, a very firm believer in racial 
differences, but as regard variability rather than in point of average 
intellectual equipment. It is also essentially, if I understand him, 
the point made by Professor Thorndike. But precisely because the 
population of the several races differs so enormously, we are for 
many of them without a fair standard of comparison. Statistically, 
any actual number of measurements is only a small sample of an 
infinite series; but we have no means of ascertaining empirically what 
the extreme variations, of which Veddas or Australians are organically 
capable, would be like. This, necessarily, leaves the ultimate problem 
of racial differences unsolved. Nevertheless, our considerations have 
not been in vain. They show, for one thing, how many factors have 
to be weighed in arriving at a fair estimate of racial capabilities, 
factors which are naively ignored in most popular discussions of the 
subject. We can, farther, say positively that whatever differences 
may exist have been grossly exaggerated. In the simpler mental opera- 
tions, comparative psychological studies indicate a specific unity of 
mankind. Differences in culture are certainly not proportionate to 
mental differences, i.e., relatively slight differences in native ability 
may well have produced tremendous cultural effects. Since, finally, 


370 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


cultural differences of enormous range occur within the same race, and 
even within very much smaller subdivisions, the ethnologist cannot 
solve his cultural problems by means of the race factor.” ** 

A. A. Goldenweiser in his book, Early Civilization, and in several 
magazine articles, is earnestly striving to remove what he calls “‘the 
modern obscurantism” of race distinctions. He makes the assertion 
that “no proof has been forthcoming of the inferiority of other racial 
stocks to the white.” * 

Franz Boas, professor of anthropology in Columbia University, in 
various publications takes the ground that the primitive races are 
much more highly endowed mentally than they have been rated, that 
their backwardness in culture and lack of opportunity have been mis- 
taken for lack of mental capacity, and that the differences in the 
culture of races are due to other factors than inborn capacity. In 
his recent article in the Nation, January 28, 1925, entitled “What is 
a Race,’ he says: “The occurrence of hereditary mental traits that 
belong to a particular race has never been proved. The available evi- 
dence makes it much more likely that the same mental traits appear in 
varying distribution among the principal racial groups. The behavior 
of an individual is therefore not determined by his racial afhliation, 
but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment. We 
may judge of the mental characteristics of families and individuals, 
but not of races.’ 7% 

Alfred M. Tozzer, professor of anthropology in Harvard Uni- 
versity, takes the ground that there can be no bad consequences in 
the mixture of the most diverse peoples.*® 

Ralph Linton, of the Field Museum of Natural History, is of 
opinion that: “There is no reason to suppose that the United States 
of one hundred or five hundred years hence will be any the worse for 


* Lowie, Culture and Ethnology, 1917, p. 45. 

* Goldenweiser, Early Civilization, p. 6. See also “Racial Theory and the 
Negro” in the Urban League Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. III; and “Some Problems 
of Race and Culture in the United States” in the Proceedings of the National 
Conference of Social Work, 1922. 

* A fuller statement of his views may be found in his The Mind of the 
Primitive Man, New York, 1911; “Human Faculty as Determined by Race,” 
Proceedings, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. 43, 
pp. 301-27; “The Anthropological Position of the Negro,” Van Norden Magazine, 
Ap., 1917; “Problem of the American Negro,” Yale Review, ns. Vol. 10; 
pp. 384-95. 

* Social Origins and Social Continutties, pp. 11-12. 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF EQUALITY 371 


the gradual absorption into its white population of the present Mongol, 
Indian, and Negro minorities. The first two are numerically unim- 
portant, while the Negroes, including those who already have a white 
mixture, form only about Io per cent of the total. . . . Even the pure 
‘old American’ is so: hopelessly mixed that a little more alien blood 
is not likely to hurt him.” 1” 

Among the other Americans who have expressed their belief in 
race equality are: H. A. Miller, of the Ohio State University, author 
of Races, Nation and Classes; G. E. Howard, of the University of 
Nebraska; ** James J. Holm, native of Wisconsin and author of Race 
Assimilation, 1910; Charles S. Keyser, of Pennsylvania, author of 
Minden Armats, The Man of the New Race, 1892; Sylvester Russell, 
author of The Amalgamation of America, Chicago, 1920; J. E. Emery, 
author of Our Fathers House, Philadelphia, 1893; W. J. Gaines, 
author of The Negro and the White-man, Philadelphia, 1897; Charles 
Stearns, author of The Black Man of the South. 

The Negro authors in America, almost without exception, regard 
the doctrine of race equality as having been firmly established. 


““An Anthropological View of Race Mixture,” Publications of the American 
Sociological Society, Vol. 19, p. 76. 
* American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 22, pp. 577-93. 


CHAPTER 48 
AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF INEQUALITY 


Authors Who Hold That Races Are Endowed with Unequal Capacities—Darwin 
—Romanes—Galton—T ylor—Keane—Marett—Gobineau—Taine—H untington 
—Dixon—Osborn—Angell—East—Grant—Wissler and Others 


URNING now to the scientific opinion upholding the more tradi- 
tional idea of racial inequalities, I will mention the following rep- 
resentative authors: 

Charles Darwin in his Decent of Man states that the races of men 
differ very notably in mental faculties.* 

G. J. Romanes, following the principle of Darwin, argues in his 
Mental Evolution in Man that the mentality of the races of men 
differs according to the degree of advancement of each race from 
the primitive state.’ 

Francis Galton, the founder of the new science of eugenics, be- 
lieved that races as well as individuals differed in hereditary endow- 
ments, and he, more than any other man, has stimulated interest in 
the hereditary factor in all social problems. 

Edward B. Tylor, an English anthropologist, holds that the “inbred 
capacity of mind” is one of the chief means of distinguishing races; 
and he points out striking contrasts in the mental and moral tempera- 
ment of the Indians and the Negroes, and of the Russians and 
Italians. He speaks of the Caucasian as “gifted with the powers 
of knowing and ruling which give him sway over the world.” * 

A. H. Keane, in his Man: Past and Present and in his Ethnology, 
accepts without question the theory of racial inequality and points out 
the innate mental traits of different races. Herbert Spencer in his 
Principles of Sociology regards the distance between the primitive and 
civilized races as very great.® 

R. R. Marett, reader in anthropology in Oxford University, be- 

lee), 

SV Ly 

* Anthropology, p. 74. 

*Ibid., p. 113. 

Port, Ch VIL, 

372 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF INEQUALITY 373 


lieves that difference in race “extends to mind as well as to body. It 
is not merely skin deep. Contrast the stoical Red Indian with the 
vivacious Negro; or the phlegmatic Dutchman with the passionate 
Italian. True, you say, but what about the influence of various 
climates, or again of their different ideals of behaviour? Quite so. 
It is immensely difficult to separate the effects of the various factors. 
Yet surely the race-factor counts for something in the mental con- 
stitution, Any breeder of horses will tell you that neither the climate 
of New Market, nor careful training, nor any quantity of oats, nor 
anything else, will put racing metal into cart-horse stock.” ° 

G. Archibald Reid, an English scholar, in his book, The Laws of 
Heredity, says: “Like individuals, races differ in their mental char- 
acteristics.”’ 7 

Among French writers the most celebrated apostle of race distinc- 
tions is Comte Arthur de Gobineau. In his Les inégalités des races 
humaines he attributes all progress to racial purity and all decadence 
to racial intermixture. 

Gustav LeBon perhaps ranks next to Gobineau in attaching. great 
importance to race differences. In his Evolution psychologique des 
peuples, he points out how each race possesses a particular set of psy- 
chological traits. 

Hippolyte Taine, the great psychologist, historian, and art critic, 
says in reference to the races of Europe: “If you consider in time 
the leading races from their first appearance up to the present, you 
will always find in them a class of instincts and of aptitudes over 
which revolution, decadences, civilizations have passed without affect- 
ing them.” § 

Edmond Demolins, in his book Comment la route crée le type social, 
which is very similar in point of view to the recent notable book Char- 
acter of Races, by Ellsworth Huntington, tries to show how the traits 
of different races have been the outcome of environment. In his 
Anglo-Saxon Supremacy, he draws very striking contrasts between the 
Anglo-Saxons and the French, 

Some other French authors holding like views are J. Deniker, The 
Races of Man, p. 121; Vacher de Lapouge, “Laws of Anthropo-Sociol- 


® Anthropology, p. OI. 

™P, 426. Some other English authors taking the same view are Stewart 
Chamberlain, in Foundations of the Nineteenth Century; Thomas Lloyd, in The 
Making of the Roman People; and Charles M. Nottidge, in The Origin and 
Character of the British People. 

® Lectures on Art, Vol. I, p, 216, 


374 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


ogy,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 6, p. 54, and “Les Selections 
sociales,” p. 293; Alfred Fouillée, Psychologte des peuples européens 
and Psychologie du peuple frangats. 

Among the American authors who hold tenaciously to the convic- 
tion that the races of mankind differ, the most outstanding representa- 
tive at the present time is Ellsworth Huntington, associate research 
professor in Yale University. In his recent book, The Character of 
Races, he attempts to show how superior and inferior racial groups 
have arisen through the process of mutations, racial mixture, and nat- 
ural selection. He begins his study in the Miocene period when the 
ancestors of man lived in trees, and shows how the change toward a 
colder and dryer climate led to a restriction of the forest area and 
the development of the anthropoid ape. The apes which migrated 
south, following the forest, underwent no improvement, whereas those 
which remained in the region of diminishing forest and colder climate 
were obliged to walk erect in going from one tree to another and to 
use their forelimbs to grasp sticks and stones to defend themselves 
from the other animals. At the same time, they had to adapt them- 
selves to a diet of cereals and meat instead of that of fruits and nuts. 

After man had evolved, the same change of climate which had de- 
veloped a higher type of ape operated to develop a higher type of man. 

“In the first great migrations those who went to the tropical re- 
gions subjected themselves unknowingly to conditions which presum- 
ably tended toward stagnation or even toward retrogression, for mod- 
erate activity was often more profitable than great activity, while the 
abundance of resources and lack of the exigencies of the seasons 
tended to give the stupid almost as good a chance of survival as the 
intelligent. Among those who migrated east or west, there was prob- 
ably no great selection of one type rather than another because there 
was no marked change in environment. They progressed to the ex- 
tent that other causes determined, but in those respects were pre- 
sumably little better off than the rest of mankind.” 

Next the author shows how each of the great glacial ages con- 
tributed to develop superior types of men through the process of 
migration, intermixture, and natural selection. 

Fach ice age affected migration in such a way as to bring about 
a convergence of the selected types of men into a small area compris- 
ing Western Asia and North Africa. There, under the influence 
of the maximum environmental change, maximum migration and maxi- 


“rs 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF INEQUALITY 375 





mum racial mixture, man reached his highest mental development.® 
The author goes on to indicate how, from the close of the ice ages 
to the present, the geographic conditions have continued to stamp 
upon each racial group a distinct character. 

He discusses the character of the American Indians, the Jews, 
Chinese, Greeks, Irish, etc., and explains their special traits as the 
outcome of three controlling factors: environment, racial intermix- 
ture, and natural selection. He even goes so far as to indicate how 
natural selection has tended to produce different types of people 
within the United States, such as the Puritans, the South Carolinians, 
the Californians, etc. “The more we study this process of selection,” 
he says, “the more we realize why one race differs from another in 
temperament and mentality as well as in physique, and why the spirit 
Gf one,age.is divetse.from that of the next.’ *? 

Roland B. Dixon, professor of anthropology in Harvard University, 
expresses his views on the subject as follows: “That there is a differ- 
ence between the fundamental human types in quality, in intellectual 
capacity, in moral fibre, in all that makes or has made any people 
great, I believe to be true, despite what advocates of the uniformity 
of man may say. It is no answer to the charge that people of cer- 
tain racial types have never unaided made their mark in history to 
say that an unfavorable environment or stress of circumstances has 
prevented the great achievements of which they are theoretically 
capable. The mere fact that in all the thousands of recorded, and 
the tens of thousands of unrecorded, history they have not risen 
superior to their environment, fought and battled their way out of 
it and into a better one—this fact alone is proof, to my mind, that 
they are less dowered with those qualities, the possession of which 
peoples of other types have proved by doing again and again what 
the weaker peoples have failed to do.” !? 

Henry Fairfield Osborn, professor of zodlogy in Columbia Uni- 
versity, takes the position that heredity is a greater factor in the 
history of man than environment and that the races of man differ very 
radically in inherited equipment. 

“European history,” he says, “has been written in terms of na- 
tionality and of language, but never before in terms of race; vet 

° The Character of Races, p. 59. 

PiLvids Diez. 

“Dixon, The Racial History of Man, p. 518. 


376 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





race has played a far larger part than either language or nationality 
in moulding the destines of men; race implies heredity and heredity 
implies all the moral, social and intellectual characteristics and traits 
which are the springs of politics and government. 

“The moral tendency of the heredity interpretation of history is 
for our day and generation and is in strong accord with the true 
spirit of the modern eugenics movement in relation to patriotism, 
namely, the conservation and multiplication for our country of the 
best spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical forces of heredity; thus 
only will the integrity of our institutions be maintained in the future. 
These divine forces are more or less sporadically distributed in all 
races, some of them are found in what we call the lowest races, 
some are scattered widely throughout humanity, but they are cer- 
tainly more widely and uniformly distributed in some races than in 
others. 

“Thus conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit 
of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial 
prejudice; it is a matter of love of country, of a true sentiment which 
is based upon knowledge and the lessons of history rather than upon 
the sentimentalism which is fostered by ignorance. If I were asked: 
What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic 
today? I would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our 
people of those hereditary traits through which the principles of our 
religious, political and social foundations were laid down and their 
insidious replacement by traits of less noble character.” 

James Rowland Angell, president of Yale University, discusses 
the evolution of intelligence in a symposium The Evolution of Man, 
edited by Baitsell. In reference to race differences he says that: 
“There is fairly definite evidence that extant human races differ 
appreciably in their native intelligence, and those which are living 
most nearly in the state of nature which we believe to have char- 
acterized the early history of our own racial stock are, generally speak- 
ing, marked by apparently lower average intelligence and by relatively 
fewer intellects of high grade.” 

Edward M. Fast, of Harvard University, in his recent book Man- 
kind at the Crossroads, expresses his conviction that the modern sci- 
ences have firmly established the fact of racial inequality. He says: 
“Thus anthropological data, psychological data, and genetical data fit 


™ Preface to Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race. 
veal Sh 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF INEQUALITY 377 


together like the parts of a picture-puzzle. In each line taken separately 
there is proof of wide variability within the race, and of different 
levels between races. Taken together, the proof is overwhelming. 

“Huntington has disposed of the bugbear of black-brown world 
domination in that novel study Cwilization and Climate. His multitude 
of varied observations establish this thought: men can reach a high 
degree of efficiency in active constructive work only where there is a 
moderate humid temperature with sufficient daily variation to act as 
a physical stimulus. Some of the sluggishness of the tropical races 
may be due to the attacks of animal parasites which can ultimately be 
eradicated. But by no means all of it is attributable to this cause. 
Continuous heat, day and night, saps the energies and breaks the 
will. Labor efficiency drops almost to the absolute zero. From three 
to five men clutter up the ground slowly carrying out tasks easily 
accomplished by any ordinary individual in the bracing air of the 
north. 

“Now this climatic limitation of initiative is a remarkable thing. 
It may account for more of the white man’s success in life than one 
would like to admit. Why the temperate regions were not settled 
sooner in the history of mankind is a deep riddle; but the fact of 
the matter is that the regions with a stimulating climate are now and 
always have been the regions where progressive ideas are carried out. 
And to-day the black and the brown races live entirely in the zone 
of low initiative, while the only members of the yellow race living 
in the zone of real thought and work are the northern Chinese and 
the Japanese. 

“Thus the conception represented by the following quotation from 
W. E. B. Dubois, the negro firebrand, is not one with which to 
frighten any but children and professional peril-hunters. Writing of 
the colored peoples, he says: ‘These nations and races, composing 
as they do a vast majority of humanity, are going to endure this treat- 
ment just as long as they must and not a moment longer. Then they 
are going to fight, and the War of the Color Line will outdo in 
savage inhumanity any war this world has yet seen. For colored folk 
have much to remember and they will not forget.’ 

“There are several interesting things about this quotation, to which 
it seems worth while to draw attention. In the first place, it calls 
to mind as an apt reply the peace offer Mark Twain’s nineteenth- 
century Yankee and his trained followers proposed to make to the 
whole massed chivalry of sixth-century England: ‘You fight in vain. 


378 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





We know your strength—if one may call it by that name. We know 
that at the utmost you cannot bring against us above five and twenty 
thousand knights. Therefore, you have no chance—none whatever. 
Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we number 54. Fifty- 
four what? Men? No, mands the capablest in the world; a force 
against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than 
may idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the barriers of 
England.’ 

“One hears such outbursts as this of Dubois solely from the mixed 
bloods. Only when there is white blood in his veins does the negro 
or the Malaysian cry out against the supposed injustice of his con- 
dition, and then only when in contact with numerically superior whites. 

“The thought aroused by Dubois’s words is more important, as 
it concerns the imputation of the colored races suffering grievously and 
long, crushed under the iron heel of white ambitions. In the nar- 
row sense this is true; broadly speaking it is a falsehood black as 
night. Individuals have suffered in every epoch; but there have been 
no racial boundaries to injustice. Self-preservation has been a 
stronger instinct than race-preservation. The sins of the white race 
against the colored, be they red, brown, or black, are trivial lapses 
from fair play compared with the evils arising from social struggles 
within their own nations. Is it not fair, then, to scan the benefits of 
white control once in a while, not in a sterile search for altruism in 
white world policies, but merely in the interests of truth? 

“Let one examine the vigorous growth of Java under the Dutch, 
the wonderful progress of India since she joined the British Empire; 
or, better still, compare the Afro-American with his cousin of Haiti 
or of tropical Africa. One and all these peoples have prospered through 
their contact with European civilization. The more intimate and 
direct the alien control, the greater is the tide of achievement. The 
more thoroughly one studies the population question, the more forcibly 
it is impressed upon him that white brains and initiative have so im- 
proved the resources of such races, that not only have millions more 
of their people passed over the bridge of life than otherwise would 
have been possible, but that these millions have lived more comfort- 
ably and peacefully.” 74 

William McDougall, professor of philosophy in Harvard Univer- 
sity, is very pronounced in his belief that the races of mankind have 
very dissimilar hereditary traits. In his book, Js America Safe for 

“East, Mankind at the Crossroads, p. 120. 


oe a oS 


AMALGAMATION: ARGUMENT OF INEQUALITY 379 


Democracy?, he contrasts the Nordic and Mediterranean races, and in- 
cidentally discusses the mentality of the Negro. 

Madison Grant, chairman of the New York Zoological Society 
and author of The Passing of the Great Race, has attracted very wide 
attention and has been much criticized because his book contends that 
the Nordic race is the greatest of all races. In contrasting the Alpine, 
Nordic, and Mediterranean races he says: ‘These races vary in- 
tellectually and morally just as they do physically. Moral, intellectual 
and spiritual attributes are as persistent as physical characters and 
are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to genera- 
tion. These moral and physical characters are not limited to one race 
but given traits do occur with more frequency in one race than in 
another. Each race differs in the relative proportion of what we may 
term good and bad strains, just as nations do, or, for that matter, 
sections and classes of the same nation.”’* .. 

“The Alpine race is always and Ani eee a race of peasants, an 
agricultural and never a maritime race. In fact they only extend 
to salt water at the head of the Adriatic and, like all purely agricul- 
tural communities throughout Europe, tend toward democracy, al- 
though they are submissive to authority both political and religous 
being usually Roman Catholics in western Europe. This race is essen- 
tially of the soil and in towns the type is mediocre and bourgeois.1® . . . 

“The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, 
adventurers and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers and 
aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant and democratic 
character of the Alpines. The Nordic race is domineering, individual- 
istic, self-reliant and jealous of their personal freedom both in political 
and religious systems and as a result they are usually Protestants. 
Chivalry and knighthood and their still surviving but greatly impaired 
counterparts are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distine- 
tions and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part 
to thegnorth Aa 

“The mental characteristics of the Mediterranean race are well 
known and this race, while inferior in bodily stamina to both the 
Nordic and the Alpine, is probably the superior of both, certainly of 
the Alpines, in intellectual attainments. In the field of art its su- 
periority to both the other European races is unquestioned, although 


* Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, p. 226. 
* Ibid., p. 227. 
* Tbid., p. 228. 


380 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


in literature and in scientific research and discovery the Nordics far 
excel it. 7* 

The most recent anthropologist to touch on this question is Clark 
Wissler, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, in his 
book, Man and Culture, New York, 1923. In reference to race differ- 
ences, he says: “Our point is that these tests do bring out individual 
differences that are innate, and also tend to reveal group differences 
of the same character. Thus we have strong grounds for the assump- 
tion that variability is an observed characteristic of innate qualities, 
both in regard to individuals and groups,” ...and he adds, “On 
what grounds could we expect that, in view of all the individual 
variation we know to exist, large hereditary groups of men would 
show identical ranges and averages of mentality ?” 

John M. Mecklin, professor of philosophy in the University of 
Pittsburgh, makes the following statement in his Democracy and Race 
Friction: “That racial differences do exist may be inferred from our 
knowledge of the psycho-physical organism which leads us to expect 
psychic differences where we find physiological differences.” 1° 

Some other well-known American authors holding similar views are 
Samuel J. Holmes, professor of zoology in the University of Cali- 
fornia, in his The Trend of the Race, page 263; Hugo Miinsterberg, 
late professor in Harvard, in Psychology, page 234; Edward A. Ross, 
in Principles of Sociology and The Old World in the New, etc.; 
Lothrop Stoddard, in The Rising Tide of Color, Revolt of Civilization, 
etc. 


* Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, p. 229. 
bide aie fei 


CHAPTER 49 
WRITERS ON NEGRO INFERIORITY 


Sir H. H. Johnston—Lombroso—Carlyle—Jefferson—Shaler—Hart—Evans— 
Bryant and Others—Question of the Superiority of the Mulatto 


NUMBER of writers, both scientific and lay, who have essayed 
to speak on racial problems, especially emphasize the inferiority 

of the Negro. For instance, Sir H. H. Johnston says that the Negro 
“in his wild state, exhibits a stunted mind and a dull content with 
his surroundings, which induces mental stagnation, cessation of all 
upward progress, and retrogression towards the brute: In some re- 
spects I think the tendency of the Negro for several centuries has 
been an actual retrograde one. As we come to read the unwritten 
history of Africa by researches into languages, manners, customs, tradi- 
tions, we seem to see a backward rather than a forward movement 
going on for some thousand past years—the return towards the savage, 
and even the brute. I can believe it possible that, had Africa been 
more isolated from contact with the rest of the world, and cut off from 
the immigration of Arabs and Europeans, the purely Negroid races, 
left to themselves, so far from advancing towards the higher type 
of humanity, might have actually reverted by degrees to a type no 
longer human.” + 

The English ethnologist, A. H. Keane, speaking of the Negro, makes 
the statement that “the standard attainable by pure Negro communities 
left to themselves may be measured by the social usage prevalent amongst 
the peoples of Ashanti, Dahomi, and the Oil Rivers, with their degraded 
fetishism and now abolished sanguinary customs.” ? 

Cesare Lombroso, in his L’Uomo Bianco e L’Uomo di colore, rates 
the Negro race as a very inferior one.® 

M. Petit de Baroncourt, professor of history in the Academy of 
Paris, expresses his conviction of the physical and mental inferiority of 
the Negro.* 


* British Central Africa, p. 472. 
*Stanford, Compendium of Geography and Travel, Vol. 1, p. 332. See also 
Keane, Man, Past and Present, p. 40. 
ere sk20. 
*De I’Emancipation des Noirs, Paris, 1845. 
381 


382 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


George N. Tricoche, in La Question Des Noirs aux Etats Unis, 
contends that the Negro is inferior and that his intermixture with 
the whites would be a catastrophe. 

A. M. Carr-Saunders, an English scholar, in his recent book, The 
Population Problem avers that “‘the Negro is intellectually on the 
average somewhat inferior, and certainly possesses somewhat different 
emotional and temperamental characteristics.” ® 

Thomas Carlyle, in his essay on “The Nigger Question,” says: 
“That you should cut the ligature, and say ‘He has made us equal,’ 
would be saying a palpable falsity, big with hideous ruin for all 
coucerned inl dtwue. 

Thomas Jefferson wrote his estimate of the Negro in the follow- 
ing guarded language: “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, 
that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct 
by time and circumstances are inferior to the whites in the endow- 
ments both of body and mind.” ° 

N. S. Shaler, late professor of geology in Harvard University, 
said of the Negro: “All the facts we have point to the same un- 
happy conclusion, that the Negro considered as a species, is, by 
nature incapable of creating or maintaining societies of an order above 
barbarism, and that, so far as we can discern, this feature of his 
nature, depending as it does, on the lack of certain qualities of mind, 
is irremediable.” ? 

Professor A. B. Hart, in The Southern South, closes his chapter 
on “Negro Character” with this statement: “Race measured by race, 
the Negro is inferior, and past history in Africa and in America 
leads to the belief that he will remain inferior in race stamina and 
race achievement.” ® 

Charles B. Davenport’s estimate of the Negro may be inferred from 
the following suggestion which he offers in reference to legislation to 
prevent un-eugenic marriages: “No person having one-half part or 
more Negro blood shall be permitted to take a white person as 
spouse. Any person having less than one-eighth part of the Negro 
blood shall not be given a license to marry a white person without a 
certificate from the State’s Eugenics Board.” ® 


"Ps: 447. 

*Works of Jefferson, Vol. 3, p. 230. 
"The Neighbor, p. 139. 

ahead 

* Eugenics Record Office Bulletin, No. 9. 


WRITERS ON NEGRO INFERIORTY 383 





Maurice Evans, an Englishman resident in South Africa, in his 
Black and White in the Southern States, comparing the Zulu and the 
American Negro, says that the former “have more native ability as 
they certainly have more dignity.’’*° Again he says: “The idea that 
the Negro has only to get similar education to do as a white man 
has done in all his varied activities, is absurd, though this opinion is 
strongly held by those of mixed descent.” 1 

The Rev. A. T. Bryant, in his Mental Development of the South 
African Native, says in reference to the Negro: “First of all, we be- 
lieve that some innate difference does at present exist between the 
mind of the average adult male of the European race and that of the 
average adult male of the African. The African boy is comparatively 
precocious up to about twelve when he undergoes an actual decline 
of mind-energy and decrease in mind-power to a point below that 
already reached in the preceding stage which is never regained.*27 ... 

“The African intellect, as exemplified in its manhood is simply 
incapable of reaching the brilliancy or of attaining the range of the 
European. Be it a matter of reflecting, or of judging, or compre- 
hending, or conceiving, the African is everywhere hopelessly outdis- 
tanced by the European. Only in the province of memory and of 
imitation can he bear a favorable comparison with him, for in these 
two respects the African is decidedly strong.*% 

“Negroes educated in European Universities,” adds the Rev. 
Bryant, “are extraordinary specimens which do not justify any modifi- 
cation of our general position.” ™ 

G. Elliot Smith, professor of anatomy in the University of Man- 
chester, in his article, “The Influence of Racial Intermixture in 
Egypt,” * offers the following comment on the Negro: “The Negro 
was as definitely negroid six centuries ago as he is now, and was as 
different from the round heads of the Mediterranean shores at the 
end of the Stone Age as at present, and all the millennia of exposure 
of their scattered descendants to vastly different climates and condi- 
tions of life, have produced amazingly little effect upon their physical 
characteristics.” He believes that the physical, mental, and moral dis- 


* Evans, Black and White in the Southern States, p. 85. 
» Ibid... p: 272: 

* Eugenics Review, Vol. 9, p. 43. 

* [bid., p. 44. 

“ Tbid., p. 49. 

Sluis VOU NTs Dr: 103, 


384 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





tinctions between races are the result of thousands of years of differ- 
entiation, and are: “substantiated by the whole history of the world, 
and the experience of those who have watched the intercourse of 
various peoples. 

“Difference of race implies a real and deep-rooted distinction in 
physical, mental and moral qualities, and the contrasts in achievement 
of the various peoples cannot be explained away by lack of oppor- 
tunities, in the face of the patent fact that among the more back- 
ward races of the present day are some that first came into contact 
with, or even were the founders of, civilization, and were most favor- 
ably placed for acquiring culture and material supremacy.” 7° 

Primitive people, Professor Smith goes on to say: “make progress 
only through the infusion of the blood of a superior race. The proto- 
Egyptians were a branch of that swarthy, narrow-headed, black-haired 
people of small stature which probably assumed its distinctive traits 
somewhere in North Africa. They settled in the Delta, and for 
thousands of years carried on an unprogressive and low type of cul- 
ture. About the time of the First Dynasty, Egypt was invaded by 
a southern branch of the Alpine race which had become adapted to 
maritime life. The new racial element became the aristocracy and 
exercised a powerful influence upon Egypt’s golden age. About the 
same time this new race invaded the south the southern extremity 
of the Egyptian population began to mingle with an alien race of a 
very different type. For, just before the time of the First Dynasty, 
small Negroes, in some respects akin to pygmies, began to appear 
in Lower Nubia; and from this time onwards this influence, and that 
of a variety of other Negro tribes, became more and more potent. 

“If the alien influences that were brought to bear on Egypt from 
the north exerted a stimulating effect upon the development of her 
culture, it is equally certain that the Negro infiltration from the 
south was a drag and a hindrance.” 1” 

William Archer, an English man of letters, in his book, Through 
Afro-America, has this to say: “I have not hitherto emphasized the 
essential and innate inferiority of the Negro race, because my argu- 
ment did not demand it. But the fact of this inferiority seems to me 
as evident as it is inevitable. However fallacious may be the bound- 
aries between this and that European race, the boundaries between the 
European and the African are real, and not to be argued away. The 


* Eugenics Review, Vol. 7, p. 166. 
* LDtd), D. 181: 


Ke. rl 


WRITERS ON NEGRO INFERIORTY 385 


European is the fruit of untold generations of upward struggle, the 
African of untold generations of immobility. At the very dawn of 
history the ancestors of the white Americans had advanced to a point 
beyond that which the ancestors of the Afro-American had attained 
when they were shipped across the Atlantic from fifty to two hundred 
years ago. That the Negro race has some very admirable qualities 
is not denied. It is not denied that civilization has brought with it 
certain disadvantages and corruptions, and that the white savage is in 
some ways a more deplorable phenomenon than the black savage. Nor 
is it denied that the Negro, in virtue of his strong imitative instinct, 
has, in many ways, shown a remarkable power of taking on a cer- 
tain measure of civilization. But all this does not practically lessen 
the huge historic gap between the two races. Even if we admit the 
innate power of the Negro to overtake the white man in intellectual 
grasp and moral stability, we must in reason allow him a few cen- 
turies to make up the millenniums of arrearage. Whatever it may 
become in the course of ten or fifteen generations, the Negro race 
here and now is inferior to the white race, not only because of its previ- 
ous condition of servitude, but, ultimately and fundamentally, because of 
its recent condition of savagery. Therefore, the white race, in accept- 
ing amalgamation, would be degrading from its birthright, and climb- 
ing down the scale of humanity.1® ... 

“Does any one really believe that the genius of Cesar and Napoleon, 
pf Milton and Goethe, had nothing to do with their facial angle, and 
could have found an equally convenient habitation behind thick lips 
and under woolly skulls?” *° 

Charles Francis Adams, after a visit to Africa, wrote an article in 
the Century Magazine expressing his conviction that an almost im- 
measurable gulf separated the mental capacity of the white man from 
that of the black man. His reflections on this subject are as follows: 
“Finally, as to the African in America, what gleam of supposable 
light does a brief visit to the White Nile throw on our home problem? 
A good deal,—perhaps. In the first place, looking about me among 
Africans in Africa,—far removed from that American environment 
to which I have been accustomed,—the scales fell from my eyes. I 
found myself most impressed by a realizing sense of the appalling 
amount of error and cant in which we of the United States have in- 
dulged on this topic. We have actually wallowed in a bog of self- 


*® Through Afro-America, p. 223. 
Subeds, p., 223. 


386 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


sufficient ignorance,—especially we philanthropists and theorists of 
New England. We do so still. Having eyes, we will not see. Even 
now, we not infrequently hear the successor to the abolitionist and 
humanitarian of the ante-civil-war period,—the ‘Uncle Tom’ period,— 
announce that the difference between the White Man and the Black 
Man is much less considerable than is ordinarily supposed, and that 
the only real obstacle in the Negro’s way is that—‘He has never been 
given a chance.’ For myself, after visiting the black man in his 
own house, I come back with a decided impression that this is the 
sheerest of delusions, due to pure ignorance of rudimentary facts; 
yet we built upon it in reconstruction days as upon a foundation 
stone,—a self-evident truth. Let those who indulge in such theories 
go to the Soudan, and pass a week at Omdurman. That place marks 
in commerce, in letters and in art, in science and architecture, tue 
highest point of development yet reached by any African race. As 
already suggested, the difference between Omdurman and London 
about measures the difference between the Black and White. Indis- 
putably great, that it admits of measurement is questionable.” 7° 

The view that the white man is superior to the Negro in mental 
endowment leads logically to the view that the mulatto is superior to 
the pure Negro. 

The late Professor N. S. Shaler, of Harvard University, asserted 
that “almost all the Negroes of this country who have shown marked 
capacity of any kind have had an evident mixture of white blood.” ** 

The opinion of Seth K. Humphrey on the question may be inferred 
from the following quotations: “Most of the literature and all of 
the statistics covering Negro accomplishments are worthless since they. 
deal mainly with doings of White men incumbered with Black in- 
herifances,*“ yew 

“Booker Washington is said to have kad a remarkably able White 
father. Surely no one who has watched his great educational work 
would say that the Black inheritance of Booker Washington was thus 
demonstrating itself.” ?° 

During the World War psychological tests were applied separately 
to the mulattoes and pure Negroes at Camp Lee. “In one of the 
tests (alpha) the lighter negroes obtained a median score of fifty, 


»“Tight Reflected from Africa,” Century Magazine, Vol. 72, p. 105. 

™ Shaler, op. cit., p. 163. 

™ Mankind: Racial Values and the Racial Prospect, New York, 1917, p. 164. 
* Thid., p. 166. 


WRITERS ON NEGRO INFERIORTY 387 


while those of darker hue fell to thirty. In another test (beta) the 
lighter class had a median score of thirty-six as compared with a 
median score of twenty-nine for the darker class.” ** 

The superiority of the mulatto over the blacks is generally assumed 
to be due to the infusion of white blood.”® 

The believers in race equality are obliged to hold that the mulatto 
or mixed product of any two races is equal to either race forming the 
mixture. Finot, in arguing this point, cites as a fact that “the 
Griquas, mixed products of Hottentots and Dutch, or the Cafusos, are 
quite equal to pure whites, just as the cross breeds of Indian and 
Spanish are at best as good as the Spaniards themselves.” 

Replying to this, Maurice Evans says: “The Griquas I do know, 
and am familiar with many Europeans who live among them, and 
have daily dealings with them. It is utterly contrary to fact to say 
they are equal to Europeans; either physically, mentally, morally, as 
a whole, neither are they equal in any single character of value. A 
more unfortunate example for M. Finot’s argument he could not pos- 
sibly have found, for the Griquas are a degenerate, dissolute, de- 
moralized people, weak and unstable, lazy and thriftless. They 
appear to be constitutionally immoral, far more so than either the Euro- 
pean or Bantu people among whom they live.” ?¢ 

Professor Edward B. Reuter, of Iowa University, in his book on 
The Mulatto in the United States and in his more recent book on 
Population Problems, admits that the mulattoes are superior to the pure 
Negroes, but he inclines to the view that the superiority of the 
mulattoes is due to more favorable opportunities and not to their 
mental inheritance from the white race. To quote his own language: 
“The colored men who have risen to eminence in literature, science, 
art, or statesmanship have been, in nearly all cases, from the group 
of bi-racial ancestry. In very few cases have full-blooded Negroes 
risen to position of first rank in the councils of their race. 

* Quoted from East, Mankind at the Crossroads, p. 136. 

* Among the innumerable authors who go on this assumption, the following 
are typical: H. E. Berlin: “The so-called Negroes who have in any way dis- 
tinguished themselves above their fellows, are not full-blood negroes, but half- 
breeds,’ (“A Southern View of Slavery,’ American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 
13, p. 518); J. J. Holm: “Ninety percent of all the leaders of the race are the 
offspring of the Caucasion.” (Race Assimilation, p. 279); David Starr Jordan: 


“Apparently, the mulatto as a whole is superior to the pure African Negro.” 
(“Biological Effects of Race Movements,” Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 87, 


p. 267.) 
* Black and White in the Southern States, p. 26. 


388 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“In explanation of this phenomenon, resort is commonly had to 
biological facts. The mulatto is pointed to as a superior man because 
he is in part a white man. He is thought to have the energy and 
ambition of the white race by virtue of his white ancestry; the full- 
blood Negro is said to be indolent and unambitious. But here as 
elsewhere the importance of heredity as a factor in social success is 
easily and generally exaggerated. The assumption was the natural one 
so long as the idea of a mental hierarchy of races was a tenable posi- 
tion. But with the establishment of the fact that the races are much 
more nearly equal in capacity than was formerly supposed, it becomes 
difficult to account for the superiority of the mulattoes in this way. 

“Tt is, however, not necessary to resort to the assumption of an 
inherent superiority of the mixture over the black part of the ancestry 
to account for the superior social and mental status; the facts are 
sufficiently explained in social and psychological terms. The mulattoes 
have enjoyed a superior opportunity for the acquisition of culture. 
As slaves they were assumed to be superior and were given superior 
opportunities; they were given the lighter occupations, those requiring 
the exercise of more intelligence; they were more in contact with 
the superior class, as body and house servants, and in various con- 
fidential and personal relations. Their relationship to the master or 
the master’s family frequently secured for them special consideration 
and privilege and opportunity not accorded to other members of the 
servile group. They enjoyed more freedom as slaves and were more 
frequently the ones who were freed from servitude and its cultural 
handicaps. Many of the present-day mulattoes are descended from 
several generations of freedmen who had a tradition of superiority 
while the bulk of the race was yet in servitude. They have had some- 
what more time to advance and have had and do have somewhat more 
encouragement in their efforts to do so. Nearly the whole force of the 
social and psychological situation has been exerted to produce the 
superior status.” 27 

7 Reuter, Population Problems, pp. 279-80. 


— 


CHAPTER 50 
DIFFERENCE OF RACES 


Relation of the Size of the Brain to Intelligence—Inferences from the Smaller 
Brain of the Negro—Nonsignificance of Size of the Brain in Determining 
the Mental Capacity—Inferiority of the Negro as Shown by Psychological 
Tests Applied to Negroes and Whites—Lack of Standard for Determining the 
Superiority of One Race over Another—The Indisputable Fact of Race 
Difference 


EVERAL scientists have postulated a connection between the mental 
capacity of races and their form of head and average brain-weight. 
Charles Darwin was perhaps the first scientist to do this. In his De- 
scent of Man is this statement: “The belief that there exists in man 
some close relation between the size of the brain and the development 
of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls 
of savage and civilized races, the ancient and modern people, and by the 
analogy of the whole vertebrate system.” * 

Dr. Bischoff admits the parallelism of large brain-weight and in- 
tellectual capacity, but does not believe that a large brain in itself uni- 
formly betokens superior intelligence. Dr. H. Matiegka, who holds to 
the theory of correlation of brain-weight and intelligence, has collected 
data showing the average brain-weight of people of different occupa- 
tions as follows: 


14 Day laborers 1410.0 grams 
34 Laborers 1435.5 grams 
14 Porters, watchmen, etc. 1435.7 grams 
123 Mechanics, workers at trades, etc. 1449.6 grams 
28 Business men, teachers, clerks, musicians, etc. 1468.5 grams 
22 College-bred scholars, physicians, etc. 1500.0 grams ? 


Sanford B. Hunt, surgeon of the United States Volunteers, bas- 
ing his conclusion upon autopsies of whites and blacks in the Civil 

rt 

? Uber das Hirngewicht die Schadelkapacitat und die Kopfform, sowie deren 


Bezichungen zur Psychischen Thatigkeit des Menschen. 
389 


390 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


War, states that the standard weight of the Negro brain is over five 
ounces less than that of the whites.’ 

On this subject Ellsworth Huntington, in his recent book, The Char- 
acter of Races, says: “Of course mere size does not mean that a brain 
is necessarily of high caliber, for the largest brain ever measured was 
that of an idiot. Nevertheless, it is a fact that as we go upward in the 
scale of evolution, both in men and animals, the size of the brain in 
proportion to the body is on the whole closely correlated with the 
degree of intelligence.’ * He says that the Negro has qualities oppo- 
site to those of the Nordic people and if placed in such an environment 
as that of Iceland would probably be exterminated.° 

Roland B. Dixon, in his book, The Racial History of Man, corre- 
lates in a general way the capacity of races with the size and form of 
their heads. Classifying racial groups according to form of the head, 
he finds that the larger-brained people, such as the Mediterranean- 
Caspian and the Ural-Alpine, have played the great part in the world’s 
history, the highest civilizations having sprung from a general mixture 
of these types. On the other hand, the small-brained people, whom he 
defines as the Proto-Australoid, and Proto-Negroid, with their low 
skulls, broad noses and prognathous jaws, have always been worsted 
in competition with the large-brained people.® 

William McDougall thinks that “‘on the large average intellectual 
capacity varies with the size of the brain.” ? 

In regard to this matter of correlation between intelligence and 
cranial form or size, I have to say that, although I appreciate the bril- 
liancy, originality, and immense value from the historical point of 
view of the thesis worked out by Professor Dixon, and although I can 
agree with Darwin and others that in a very general way there is a 
correlation between the mind and its envelope, I doubt if we know 
enough of the character and extent of the correlation to justify us in 
applying it to any of our present-day race problems. 

In recent years effort has been made to measure the intelligence of 
individuals by psychological tests, such as that of Binet and others. 
Sundry investigators have applied these tests to groups of Negroes and 
whites with a view of ascertaining the difference in their mental ca- 


* Smith, The Color Line, p. 82. 
*Huntington, The Character of Races, p. 31. 
° Ibid., p. 218. 

°R S18: 

* The Group Mind, p. 360. 


ee Se ST ee 


DIFFERENCE OF RACES 301 





— 





pacity. George O. Ferguson applied tests to 489 whites and 421 col- 
ored pupils, and his findings were that in the so-called lower traits 
there was no great difference between the Negro and white; but in a 
test of higher capacity the average Negro appeared to be only three- 
fourths as efficient as white persons of the same training. He says: 
“It is probably correct to say that pure Negroes, and Negroes three- 
fourths pure, mulattoes and quadroons, have roughly 60, 70, 80 and 
go percent respectively of white intellectual efficiency.” ° 

The same writer in an article on “The Mental Status of the Ameri- 
can Negro,” in the Scientific Monthly for June, 1921, remarks that 
psychological tests indicate that the average ability of the American 
Negro is about ten percent below the average of the whites. He does 
not believe that the Negro will ever equal the whites in mentality. 

Miss A. H. Arlitt, of Bryn Mawr College, tested 342 children from 
the primary grades of one district, including children of white native- 
born Americans, of Italians, and of Negroes. The results showed 
marked inferiority of the Negro children.® 

Professor R. S. Woodworth, in his article on the “Comparative 
Psychology of Races,” in the Psychological Bulletin ?° summarizes the 
findings of three observers who applied intelligence tests to white and 
colored children, showing in each case the inferiority of the latter. 

Messrs. S. L. Pressey and G. F. Teter, in an article on “Comparison 
of Colored and White Children by Means of Group-scale of Intelli- 
gence,’ in the Journal of Applied Psychology for 1919, have summed 
up their conclusions as follows: “The colored children of a given age 
are at about the average for white children two years younger... . 
Analysis by test shows the colored to average below white children of 
the same age on all the tests.” 

The United States Army records, giving the results of mental tests 
applied to different races, show that the mental age of the Negro ranks 
lowest, being 10.37 as compared to the 13.08 for the native whites.™ 

“Our army recruits,” says East, “after passing successfully on a 
physical basis, were tested by examinations especially designed to grade 
inherent ability without giving advantage to the educated man because 
of his education. These examinations formed the greatest psycholog- 
ical investigation ever conducted, and they yielded results which are 

®* Journal of Heredity, Ap. 1917, p. 153. 


° Quoted by McDougall in Js America Safe for Democracy? p. 63. 
WONT I Ap. 402. 


™ Paul Popenoe, “Intelligence and Race,” Journal of Heredity, Vol. 13, No. 6. 


302 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





extremely useful. They are not perfect by any means, but as a meas- 
ure of mental capacity they compare favorably with the average school 
examination designed for measuring knowledge in a given subject. It 
must be confessed that I for one hesitated in coming to a judgment on 
their validity until I had had an opportunity of examining the com- 
plete report on them published as a memoir of the National Academy 
of Sciences. There is in this report ample evidence to convert the 
sceptic to the belief that they give a picture of innate ability which is 
statistically valid, when averages only are considered.” 

“A very large number of individuals were given various tests, and 
were rated on a letter-scale running from the very superior, rated A, 
to the very inferior who had not sufficient mentality to become satis- 
factory common soldiers, rated D—. A random sample of these exam- 
inations geographically representative follows: 


Number Percentage making grade 
of 
Race cases A B B— le C— D D— 


Whites— 


Groups 1, Il, IV.': ‘93,073 4.1 8.0 15.0 25.0 23.8 ie i 7.0 
Negroes— 


Groupiel Viele wanes 18,8091 0.1 0.6 2.0 oe? 12.9 29.7. 49.0 


“Some of the examinations undoubtedly placed the Negroes at a 
slight disadvantage, but since others were advantageous to them, the 
table makes out a very good case for white superiority. And the re- 
sults are corroborated in other ways. For example, 45.6 percent of 
a large sample of Negroes from Northern States rated D or D—, while 
86.2 per cent of a sample of similar size from the Southern States 
obtained this low rating. Thus, after making large corrections for 
possible unfair application of the tests, the ambition and relative intel- 
ligence which has made so many Negroes migrate to the North is 
measured quantitatively.” 1%; 

An analysis of the Army intelligence measurements seems to show 
that the low rating of certain white and Negro groups is related to de- 
fective elementary education, and this fact raises the question as to 
whether the low rating of the Negro as compared to the whites might 
not be due to lack of schooling. 

Some psychologists interpret all mental tests as of negative value 
in determining the question of inherited race differences. For example, 


™ Popenoe, “Intelligence and Race,” Journal of Heredity, Vol. 13, No. 6. 
ADIs, Dell 3A. 





DIFFERENCE OF RACES 393 





Henry C. Link in his article “What is Intelligence,” in the Atlantic 
Monthly, September, 1923, says: 

“There is absolutely nothing in the technique of intelligence tests 
as applied so far, which warrants any comparison whatsoever between 
the inherent intelligence of various groups or races. All that we can 
say is that there is a difference in their scores, and that this difference 
may be due to any number of factors, of which native endowment is 
only one.” 

In the opinion of the author of this book psychological tests are 
very valuable for vocational guidance, and they indicate individual and 
racial differences, but are not conclusive as to the superiority of one 
individual or race over another. For illustration, two individuals may 
show the same I. Q. and yet be as opposite as the poles in the urge to 
adventure, in persistency, in constructive imagination and other char- 
acteristics which no psychological test has been able to discover. A 
Chinaman may show a lower intelligence rating than an American and 
yet may have traits which admirably fit him for his native environ- 
ment. He may be considered inferior only in the sense that he is not 
admirably fitted to our environment. 

It has been often pointed out by school teachers as evidence of the 
inferiority of the Negro that the development of his mind tends to be 
arrested about the age of puberty. Testimony to this effect seems to 
be pretty unanimous among teachers in Africa. Carr-Saunders, how- 
ever, suggests that this tendency to arrest in Negro education may be 
merely “a turning away from the training felt to be strange and for- 
eign, owing to the strength of the native tradition which claims all the 
affection and interest of the young man.” 14 

The term race equality involves a good deal more than a general 
ability to learn. It means like response to the same stimulus, the pos- 
session of the same propensities, the same emotional temperament, 
and the same general aptitudes. For myself I see no reason for as- 
suming that the races of man are alike in these respects if dogs are not. 
I do not think that any one acquainted with dogs will contend that the 
traits and propensities of the bulldog-are the same as those of the bird- 
dog, although in general intelligence the two may appear to be equal. 
Presuming that the American Indian and the African Negro are equally 
endowed mentally, it is nevertheless obvious that they differ strikingly 
in temperament, that the Indian, having adapted himself by natural 
selection to his environment, has acquired mental, emotional, and phys- 

* The Population Problem, p. 398. 


394 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


ical traits different from those acquired by the Negro in Africa. The 
Indian is stolid and obstinate; the Negro plastic and rollicking. 

Two children of the same family often show, so far as anybody can 
discover, the same degree of intelligence and yet stand as opposite as 
the poles in natural gifts, such as initiative, originality, imagination, 
temper, and capacity for conversation, mathematics, music or mechani- 
cal manipulation. We do not know how to define such differences in 
terms of unit characters, and know nothing of their mode of inheritance. 

Race equality means that a black skin is equal to a white one, and, 
while I admit that there is no way of proving that either kind of skin 
is superior, because skin-color has a different value for each race, the 
fact is that the white skin is superior from the point of view of the 
white race. There is, therefore, no truth in the statement that the 
races of man are equal in the sense that their heritable traits are equally 
desirable. 

To sum up: The theory of race equality, in a certain limited sense, 
may be rationally defended, that is, we have reason to believe that all 
races of men have the same mental faculties, and that in general abil- 
ity to learn they differ in no important degree. But, due to many 
centuries of natural selection, the races of men have not now equal 
capacity to adapt themselves to the same environmental conditions, nor 
to attain to the same accomplishments. 

Race equality means that, whereas differences in hereditary value 
exist among all varieties of plants and animals, the races of men form 
an exception to the rule and through all the vicissitudes of climate and 
social revolution have remained undifferentiated. It means that the 
biological principle of natural selection does not apply to human beings, 
that no matter what climatic differences men may have been subjected 
to, the average value of each group remains the same. It means that 
sexual selection is inoperative among men, and that no matter what 
principle may govern the choice of human beings in mating, each gen- 
eration in every group remains endowed with equally desirable inheri- 
tance. It means that there is no such thing as social selection, that 
in the long history of warfare among men, it has made no difference 
what type of men have been killed, the average quality of each racial 
group remains the same. It means that all history is nonsense which 
speaks of the decadence of peoples, that race values always remain 
the same for each race throughout its history. It means that the sci- 
ence of eugenics is “bunk,” that, no matter how races or individuals 
may intermix, the resulting progeny always yields to each group the 


DIFFERENCE OF RACES 395 


same proportion of physically and intellectually efficient individuals. 
This is, indeed, a complacent philosophy, which no man of the first 
order of ability has ever believed in. 

For the most part our modern apostles of race equality and amal- 
gamation represent a reaction against a class of racial philosophers 
who have gone to the opposite extreme of attributing all progress to 
the enrichment of racial inheritance. The equalitarians and amalga- 
mationists sneer at such writers as Madison Grant, who holds a brief 
for the Nordic race, and who overlooks the influence of all environ- 
mental factors in social progress. They speak of him and his followers 
as neo-Gobineaus, and they find in the evident fallacy of the one-sided 
view of Grant and Gobineau a proof that all progress has been due 
entirely to environment. The fact is that the neo-Gobineaus and the 
neo-amalgamationists are equally irrational and blind to essential facts. 
Both antagonists are influenced more by their emotions than by their 
reason and mistake an obsession for an intellectual judgment. They 
remind one of the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, who was so ham- 
pered by his cranial capacity that when an idea entered his mind he could 
look at it only on one side. The neo-amalgamationists say that there is 
no evidence satisfactory to their minds that races are unequal. And 
their conclusion is perfectly sound from their point of view, for they 
rule out, as unsatisfactory or as no evidence, all the facts of history and 
biological data which do not lend color to their obsession. 

The controversy between the neo-Gobineaus and the neo-amalga- 
mationists is merely a revival of the old question of nature or nur- 
ture, of the relative importance of heredity and environment. Men 
of small caliber, whose emotions run away with their reason and who 
are naturally inclined to see only one side of a question, are apt to go 
to one extreme or the other in evaluating heredity and environment. 
And this question especially lends itself to a one-sided view, for the 
reason that the line of demarcation between heredity and environment 
can never be exactly determined. 

I imagine, however, that the great body of sane scientific men and 
laymen will look on the controversy between the neo-Gobineaus and 
neo-amalgamationists with a large amount of indifference, and, in the 
meantime, go on their way discovering and applying new knowledge 
of both heredity and environment in the interest of human progress. 

While I do not believe in the equality of the human races, any more 
than in the equality of dogs or of tobacco, I would not wish to be under- 
stood as having the slightest sympathy with the idea that the Nordic 


306 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


race is the paramount race of the world. The Nordic race is the great- 
est race only in the sense that it is better adapted than any other race to 
the Nordic region. Other races are equally well adapted to their en- 
vironments and have made contributions to culture equal to those of 
the Nordics. 

The Nordic race seems to have special aptitudes for exploration, 
colonization, science, and invention. The Mediterranean race seems to 
have special aptitudes for esthetic achievement, excelling in painting, 
sculpture, and architecture and in the graces of speech, manners, and 
general ornamentation. Both races have made very different but es- 
sential contributions to civilization, and there is certainly no ground for 
the hypothesis that one is intellectually superior to the other. Each 
has gone through a long process of natural selection and has acquired 
physical and mental traits suited to its environment. 

As between what we call the Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and 
Semitic races, I think that any claim of the superiority of one over the 
other is invidious in view of the great contribution of each to the 
world’s culture. But the fact that any two races have made great con- 
tributions to culture is not a proof that their amalgamation is, under all 
circumstances, desirable, or advantageous to civilization. 

Finally, whether the races are equal or unequal has very little to do 
with the race problem, for as I shall attempt to show in subsequent 
chapters, the problem would be essentially the same if all races were 
in fact equal. Our reaction to the problem will be very slightly affected 
by anything we may believe in reference to racial superiority or infe- 
riority. As far as my discussion of the race problem is concerned, I 
am willing to assume that all races are equally capable of the highest 
culture. 

The essential fact in the race problem is that races differ, whether 
that difference be inborn or acquired. Discarding all considerations of 
superiority and inferiority, I take the ground that racial groups differ. 
They differ in physical characteristics, in psychological traits, in tradi- 
tion, and in general culture, and these differences give rise to the race 
problem, no matter what may be the facts as to the superiority of one 
race over another. 

In the following chapter I shall venture to point out some of the 
obvious differences between the Negro and the Caucasian. 


CHAPTER 51 
NEGRO-CAUCASIAN PHYSICAL CONTRASTS 


Anatomy and Physiology of the Negro—Resistance to Disease—Muscular Strength 
—Acuteness of the Senses—Wide Differences among the Negroes Them- 
selves 


Physically the Negro differs from the Caucasian as follows: 


STATURE AND PROPORTIONS 


His average stature is shorter.? 

His arms are on the average two inches longer. 

His fingers are long and more slender.” 

He has longer legs, with a thin calf.* 

He has a flat foot, low instep, backward projecting heel, and some- 
what prehensile great toe. The ankle of the European rises from 2% 
to 2%4 inches above ground; that of the Negro from 1% to 114.4 

The great toe of the Negro is shorter than his second toe and also 
shorter than the great toe of the Caucasian.® 

He has a shorter neck, which gives strength in carrying burdens.°® 

He has a narrower and more pointed pelvis, giving an ungraceful 
straightness to the waistline. 


HEAD 


He has a longer and more narrow head, being dolichocephalic, al- 
though some types of Negroes have somewhat broad heads. 

He has a thick cranium, resistant to blows which would break the 
ordinary European skull. 


*Burmeister, Comparative Anatomy and Psychology of the African Negro, 
DAG. 
> lind., D.. 6: 

* Tbid., pp. 6-7. 
RL Pe. OD, 0. 7. 
CADIS D. 
°Tbid., p. Io. 
"Tbid., pp. 8, 10. 


397 


308 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





He has a smaller brain, averaging about thirty-five ounces as com- 
pared to forty-five ounces for the European.* 

The sutures of the skull close earlier than in case of the European. 

He has a projecting jaw; large zygomatic arches; and high, prom- 
inent cheek bones. 


FEATURES 


He has a thick epidermis, cool, soft, and velvety to the touch, mostly 
hairless and emitting a peculiar odor. 

His complexion is a deep brown, due to thickness of the coloring 
matter in the Malphigian mucus membrane. 

He has black eyes with a yellowish sclerotic coat.* 

His hair, in cross-section view, is elliptical and flattened, causing it 
to grow spirally and giving it a frizzy or woolly appearance.”® 

He has a short, flat, snub nose, depressed at the base, with dilated 
nostrils and concave ridge. 

He has thick, protruding lips. 

The diseases of smallpox and measles are more fatal to the Negro 
than to the Caucasian; while the Negro is largely immune from yellow 
fever, which is extremely fatal to the Caucasian. 

The constitution of the Negro is more resistant to the injurious ef- 
fects of alcohol because of his greater power of elimination through 
the pores of the skin. 

White physicians, who have had long experience in treating the 
Negro, find that in many cases he requires a different dosage from that 
required by the white man. 

In muscular strength the Negro is probably inferior to the white 
man, 1. e., he is less capable of sustained physical effort. The physical 
strength of the white man has, however, on the average, declined as a 
result of the substitutes he has invented for muscular power. Emer- 
son remarked that the civilized man had built himself a coach and lost 
the use of his legs. But there may be a connection, as Spencer re- 
marked, between muscular strength and brain power. Pugnacity and 
determination may give the muscles more strength.” 

The Negro differs somewhat from the Caucasian in acuteness of 


*Deniker, The Races of Man, p. 56; Burmeister, op. cit., p. 10. 
* Burmeister, op. cit., p. 12. 

* Tbid., p. 12. 

“Odum, Social and Mental Traits of the Negro, p. 167. 
"Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1, Ch. V. 


NEGRO-CAUCASIAN PHYSICAL CONTRASTS 399 


the senses. Explorers generally comment upon the superior sight of 
all uncivilized people,’® and statistics seem to show that all dark-eyed 
people have better eyes than the light-eyed. Professor Henry Drum- 
mond believed that the eyes of civilized man were rapidly undergoing 
degeneracy.’* Upon the thesis that primitive people have superior eyes, 
it may be inferred that the vision of the Negro is superior to that of 
the Caucasian, although comparative data on the subject are not avail- 
able. 

In sensitiveness of the ear the Negro, in common with all primi- 
tive people, is superior to the Caucasian. It is said that the Veddahs 
of Ceylon find bees’ nests by the hum, and that the Australians can 
hear a horse’s footsteps a mile distant.1® 

Frances Kellor found in her investigation of the sense of hearing 
among whites and Negroes in the Southern States that the former could 
hear the tick of a watch at a distance of four and seven-tenths inches 
and the latter at a distance of six and three-tenths inches.’® 

In the matter of smell, the lower animals generally surpass man. 
This is especially observed in ants and dogs. Likewise, the more prim- 
itive races of man seem to have more sensitive nostrils than civilized 
people. The Andamanese are said to be able to find fruit at a great 
distance by the smell. Professor Drummond says: “The sense of 
smell, compared with its development among lower animals, is, in the 
civilized man, already all but gone. Compared with the savages, it is 
an ascertained fact that the civilized man in this respect is vastly in- 
ferior.” +’ The senses of taste and smell are so closely allied that what 
is said of one applies to the other. 

To pain, the Negro, in common with all primitive people, seems to 
be callous. ‘The savage,” says Letourneau, “‘is ordinarily less sensitive 
than the civilized man to the inclemency of climate, to physical pain, 
etc.” 18 Spencer points out that, among peoples having few means of 
alleviating discomforts, natural selection would favor the survival of a 
callous type.?® 

The Negro not only differs physically from the white man, but in his 


ne VOLT. VL 

“The Ascent of Man, p. 104. 
*TLetourneau, Sociology, p. 73. 

* Experimental Sociology, p. 52. 

™ Op. cit., p. 106. 

* Sociology, p. 74. 

* Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1, Ch. V. 


400 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


native country is represented by divergent types.2° Professor Shaler, 
of Harvard University, attempted to point out the different types of 
Negro in the United States due to their coming from different zones 
and stocks of Africa. He defined the Guinea type, Zulu type, Arab 
type, and Red Bongo type.*? 

Recently the theory has been advanced by Professor Keith that the 
differences between races are due to variations in the functioning of 
the ductless glands, which are known to have a profound influence on 
bodily organs.”? 

® See Ratzel, History of Mankind; Dowd, The Negro Races, Vols. 1 and 2. 


* Popular Science Monthly, Vol. -57. 
* Nature, Vol. 104, p. 302. 


CHAPTER 52 
THE PSYCHE OF THE NEGRO 


Cheerfulness—Impulsiveness— Vanity — Improvidence—Frankness—Truthfulness 
—Sympathetic Response—Emotionalism—Intolerance of Discipline—Restless- 
ness — Irrational Thinking — Reminiscent Imagination — Feeble Inhibiting 
Power, etcetera. 


N regard to the psychological characteristics of the Negro, the first 
fact to notice is that there is more uniformity in them than there is 
in those of the Caucasian.* 

The mind of the Negro can best be understood by likening it to 
that of a child. For instance, the Negro lives in the present, his in- 
terests are objective, and his actions are governed by his emotions. Dr. 
Carl Vogt, professor of natural history in the University of Geneva, 
and Fellow of the Anthropological Society of London, says: ‘The 
erown up Negro partakes, as regards his intellectual faculties, of the 
nature of the child, the female, and senile white. He manifests a pro- 
pensity to pleasure, music, dancing, physical enjoyments, and imitation, 
while his inconstancy of impressions and all the feelings are those of 
the child.” * Ray Stannard Baker, in his observation of the Southern 
Negro, was struck by his cheerfulness: “The temperament of the 
Negro is irresponsibly cheerful, he overflows from his small home, and 
sings and laughs in the streets; no matter how ragged or forlorn he 
may be, good humour sits upon his countenance, and his squalor is 
not unpicturesque. A banjo, a millet supper from time to time, an ex- 
citing revival, give him real joys.” * 

Says Burmeister: “The Negro is very loquacious and given to loud 
outbursts of joy or grief.” * 

William H. Thomas, himself a Negro, also noted the childish traits 
of his race: “The Negro lives only in the present, and though at times 
doleful in language and frantic in grief, he is, like a child, readily 
soothed by trifles and easily diverted by persuasive speech.” ® 

*Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction, pp. 34, 333. 

* Lectures on Man, p. 116. 

* Following the Color Line, p. 61. 

“Comparative Anatomy and Psychology of the African Negro, p. 15. 


*The American Negro, p. 134. 
401 


402 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


If cheerfulness is characteristic of children and of the Negro mind, 
so also are impulsiveness and fits of anger. The Negro, like a child, 
is easily irritated, and prone to quarrel and to fight. When angered he 
becomes a “raving Amazon, as it were, apparently beyond control, 
growing madder and madder each moment, eyes rolling, lips protruding, 
feet stamping, pawing, gesticulating.” ° 

The Negro is like a child in his vanity, fondness for showing off, 
and in his love of the spectacular.? He has an “inordinate love of pa- 
rade and show.” ® Says the Negro Thomas: “He assumes knowledge 
when densely ignorant, and to have wealth when sunk in deepest pov- 
erty. Assuredly such self-sufficiency would be amazingly inexplicable, 
did we not know that he has inordinate craving for all spectacular dis- 
play which makes him the central figure.” ® 

Jealousy, which is closely linked with vanity, is a great passion in 
the Negro.’ 

Says John Daniels, “The members of this race are excessively dis- 
posed to circulating gossip and slander about one another and gener- 
ally to depreciating one another’s conduct and character. . . . Let one 
of them make a proposal or initiate an enterprise appealing for general 
support, and immediately detractors arise, to cast aspersions on his 
motives and to propose something different.” ™“ 

Living like a child in the present, the Negro has little thought of 
the morrow, and is therefore very improvident.’* Concerning this trait, 
DuBois says: “Probably few poor nations waste more money by 
thoughtless and unreasonable expenditure than the American Negro, 
and especially those living in large cities like Philadelphia. First, they 
waste much money on poor food, and unhealthful methods of cooking. 
The crowds that line Lombard Street on Sundays are dressed far be- 
yond their means, much money is wasted in extravagantly furnished 
parlours, dining-rooms, guest-chambers, and other visible parts of the 
Homse peri e 

“Only pressure from the strongest animal needs will force him 

*Odum, Social and Mental Traits of the Negro, p. 224. 
"Tbid., p. 255. Burmeister, op. cit., pp. 14, 16, 18. 
* Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 377. 

*The American Negro, p. 121. 

* Burmeister, of. cit., p. 17. 

“In Freedom’s Birthplace, p. 156. 


™ Burmeister, op. cit., p. 16. 
*% The Philadelphia Negro, p. 87. 


i 


THEPSY CHE) .OF+ EEE |) NEGRO 403 


to forecast the future, and sacrifice the present to make provision 
foraits;i/44 

Maurice Evans makes this comment upon the Negroes he observed 
in the Southern United States: “I saw abundant evidence of reckless, 
wasteful expenditure. The dress of the city Negro congregations was 
more fashionable, with apparently more spent on gewgaws and frip- 
pery, than that of the middle class English congregations probably ten 
times as wealthy. The youth of both sexes were often adorned in ultra- 
fashionable attire, often looking ridiculously bedizened, and obviously 
conscious of their finery. I have seen such emerging from a pitifully 
poor-looking home, leaving a mother dressed in rags. The drummer 
selling gramophones, harmoniums, buggies, and other luxuries on the 
deferred payment system, can always find customers or victims in the 
Negro cabins. ... 

“On market days and shopping nights, they throng the streets, not 
to buy necessaries and depart, but to lounge about, feel important, and 
finally succumb to the temptations to buy some useless article they 
cannot afford.” 15 

Of the improvidence of the Negro of the Mississippi Valley, Stone 
remarks: “In a town full of negroes we have had to largely substitute 
coal as a cooking fuel because we could not get stovewood cut. Ona 
plantation with nearly three hundred Negroes surroundimg us my part- 
ners wife has frequently, for long periods, had to patronize a city 
laundry. . . . It is so easy to exist by various and devious means, that 
our Negroes, in alarming numbers, are ceasing to care to do much more 
than live from hand to mouth.” 1° 

The Negro manifests a juvenile characteristic also in his natural 
frankness and truthfulness. He is apt to speak unreservedly, since he 
is not given to reflection. His credulity and proneness to believe what- 
ever is told him are often taken advantage of by the unscrupulous 
white men, and are the means of enticing the Negro to part with his 
money. Some writers claim that the Negro is suspicious and distrust- 
ful,’” but I think this is true only of those who have suffered from their 
frankness and truthfulness. 

Since the Negroes are very emotional, and swayed largely by feel- 

“ Tbid., p. 88. 

* Black and White in the Southern States, p. 89. 
* Stone, op. cit., p. 199. 

* Odum, op. cit., p. 39; Thomas, op. cit., p. 140. 


404 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


ing, they are easily appealed to through their sympathies. They are 
very responsive to a kind word or act of generosity, and manifest a 
deep and lasting affection for white people who befriend them. This 
is shown in innumerable instances among Negro domestics. 

Professor Shaler says of the Negro: “They have a singularly quick 
sympathetic contact with the neighbor; they attain to this state of mind 
and shape themselves to meet him as no other primitive people do. 
Those who have had a chance to compare in this regard the Negro and 
the American Indian must have been struck by the difference between 
the two peoples in this most important feature. The Indian, though 
really much more akin to us in spirit, is so slow to become friendly that 
we rarely attain to any close relations with him. The Negro comes 
even more quickly to that attitude than the average man of our own 
PAGCOR bein 

“We have in the Negro capacities for affection and good faith which 
of themselves alone afford an important part of the foundations of so- 
ciety 1° . . . a disposition which is perhaps more cheerful, more kindly 
than that of any other race.” *° 

Among themselves, however, they rarely form strong ties. In hours 
of sorrow or misfortune there is often a pathetic absence of a true 
friend to offer help or solace.”! 

Sexual incontinence is a natural result of their emotionalism and 
sympathetic responsiveness. 

A very striking child-like trait among Negroes is their intolerance 
of discipline. They chafe under restraint, and on this account drift into 
occupations in which the labor is irregular and unskilled. They fre- 
quently change masters for no other reason than to escape discipline. 
Commenting on this trait, the Negro author, Thomas, says: ‘Every 
semblance of that power of endurance inherent in the Saxon race is 
conspicuously wanting in the freed people.” ?? Odum says they shirk 
details and difficult tasks.?3 

Restlessness is another child-like trait of the Negro, closely associ- 
ated with his dislike of discipline, and his love of sight-seeing. He is 
ever on the go. He must go to town on Saturday, join every excursion, 


* The Neighbor, p. 140. 
Oia. Dh 50. 

” [bid., p. 157. 

* Odum, op. cit., p. 251. 
Ode C4t..D, 72 

op OR ior t tain BUR Tad 


LHe PY CHE, OF THE yNEGRO 405 


or frequently move bag and baggage from one plantation to another, 
or from one town to another, or from one state to another. 

“This travel,” says Stone, “is for the most part entirely aimless, 
and it is a common thing for a Negro to take a trip from a plantation 
to a town fifteen miles distant, with bare train fare in his pocket, and a 
crop badly in need of his attention at home. On Saturday, field work 
is practically suspended, and that day is usually given to aimless mov- 
ing about, or to assembling about stores and stations to witness arrivals 
and departures of others.”’ *4 

Mecklin thinks that in reasoning the Negro “tends to subordinate 
the relational and abstract elements to the imaginal,’ ... and that 
“the individual or group that tends to do its thinking in terms of men- 
tal imagery rather than in general ideas will be strongly emotional and 
perhaps will find logical thinking difficult from the presence of the dis- 
turbing emotional elements. Where this peculiarity has its roots deep 
in individual or racial temperament the results are of particular im- 
portance for the student of social problems.” 7° He shows an entire 
absence of the judicial temperament. His conclusions generally rest 
upon mere feeling or bias. Thomas observed that: “the Negro neither 
associates correlated facts, nor deduces logical sequences from obvious 
causes. He is largely devoid of imagination in all that relates to purely 
intellectual exercises, though he has fairly vivid conceptions of such 
physical facts as appeal to the passions or appetites.” 7° . . . “His will 
is governed by mercurial and intractable ebullitions of moods.” 7 

The actions of the Negro, more often than his reasoning, show an 
absence of rational correlation. His behavior is often characterized 
as whimsical or notional.?* In his migratory habits, and in his purchas- 
ing of goods, and in his choice of an occupation or place of residence, 
there is often no rational explanation that any one can discern. 

Again the Negro is child-like in his faculty of imagination, which is 
employed almost exclusively in reproducing concrete images reflected, 
upon his retina. It is rarely employed in visualizing abstract ideas, such 
as honor, virtue, loyalty, and truth.2® External blandishment controls 
him more than fixed principles do. The more the mind of any indi- 
vidual is filled with concrete images the more intense is the strength of 

* Stone, op. cit., p. III. 

> Op. cit., p. SI. 

* Thomas, The American Negro, p. 109. 

7" Thid., p. 130. 

* stone, of. cit, p. 145. 

” Odum, op. cit., p. 39. 


406 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


his emotions, and the weaker the force of abstract considerations which 
hold the emotions in check. 

In consequence of his emotional dominance the Negro has feeble 
inhibiting power. Whatever feeling, desire, or passion seizes him for 
the moment, tends to express itself in immediate action. Lack of inhi- 
bition in the Negro explains his sexual incontinence, and his disposition 
to quarrel, fight, and steal. It is often said that the Negro is “a born 
pilferer,” *° but in fact there is no such thing as an instinct or natural 
tendency to steal. The general practice of stealing is due to a momen- 
tary craving which is not, as in the case of the white man, restrained by 
fixed rules which have been reflectively set up as guides to conduct. 

The gregarious tendency is perhaps stronger in the Negro than in 
any other race. He loves the crowd, and has nothing of the Anglo- 
Saxon aptitude for isolation, or ability to resist crowd-pressure. In any 
political or social issue which arouses strong passions, the Negro tends 
to act on the basis of common feeling or prejudice, and not on that of 
differences in ideas and convictions. 

Imitativeness is a strong characteristic of the Ne; egro, and is closely 
connected with his gregariousness.** 

The strong tendency of the Negro to loafing and vagabondage is 
the outcome of his gregariousness, his dislike of restraint and discipline, 
his lack of foresight, his weak inhibiting power, and his propensity to 
migrate. All through the South, at railway stations, in shopping dis- 
tricts, and in Negro residence quarters, you may see groups of Negroes 
talking together and watching the crowd. In Negro villages in Africa 
the men spend almost their entire time in the palaver house, while the 
women do all of the industrial labor of supporting the population. 
Throughout the Southern states this African custom of compelling the 
women to support the family prevails to an astonishing extent, especially 
in towns where the women engage in domestic service. 

In reference to this trait McDougall makes the apt remark that 
“races bred in the tropics are in fact incurable loiterers, their chief de- 
sire is for the afternoon life or, as is commonly said of the Malays 
throughout the Eastern Archipelago, they are great legswingers; they 
prefer to undertake no labour more arduous than sitting still swinging 
their legs. All this, though more or less true of the tropical races in 
general, is pre-eminently true of those inhabiting regions which are 

” Thomas, op. cit., p. 384. 

™ Burmeister, op. cit., p. 14. 


THE PSYCHE OF THE NEGRO 407 


moist as well as hot, the Malays, the Burmese, the Siamese, the Pap- 
uans, the Negroes of the African jungle regions.”’ *? 

Self-abasement or submissiveness is a trait generally associated with 
strong gregariousness.** The Negro is accustomed to following the 
crowd, and is prone to lean upon any one of strong will and overbearing 
conduct.** “The freedman,” says Thomas, “‘is essentially a helpless 
being, with inbred disposition to lean on somebody or something.’ *° 
He is easily worked up to a high pitch of frenzy. Wherever he lives in 
considerable masses, as in the segregated quarters of our large cities, 
he constitutes a very inflammable element of the population. He easily 
yields to crowd contagion and is very subject to hypnotic influence.** 

The characteristic of self-abasement, involving as it does a lack of 
self-respect, explains the Negro’s extraordinary imitativeness. “This 
slavish imitation of the white,’ says Mecklin, “even to the attempted 
obliteration of physical characteristics, such as woolly hair, is almost 
pathetic, and exceedingly significant as indicating the absence of feel- 
ings of race pride or race integrity. Any imitation of one race by an- 
other, of such a wholesale and servile kind as to involve complete race 
self-abnegation, must be disastrous to all concerned.” ** 

Carr-Saunders remarks that Negroes are ‘“‘un-self-assertive as com- 
pared with white men.” *° 

The self-abasement among the Negro is the outcome of his African 
environment, where the aspects of nature are antagonistic, terrifying, 
and overawing. Centuries of life in this environment has developed 
an apprehensiveness and sense of fear which give rise to much super- 
stition, and dread of things powerful, unusual, or mysterious. The 
Negro shows an extraordinary fear of an officer of the law, of dark- 
ness, of black cats, of dogs, or of a corpse.*? 

The Negro’s strong instinct of flight, and his correspondingly strong 
emotion of fear, make him a prey to superstition to an extent not found 
in any other race. 

The Negro has an explosive mental temperament. To make this 

™The Group Mind, p. 303. 

* Burmeister, op. cit., p. 17. 

* Odum, op. cit., p. 255. 

* Op. cit., Di 371. 

* Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction, p. 43. 

* (bid. p: 08. 

* The Population Problem, p. 463. 

* Odum, op. cit., p. 240. 


408 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


clear it is necessary to point out that the mental temperaments of the 
races of mankind are of two opposite types. One is characterized by a 
tendency to immediate reaction in some form of behavior, and the other 
by a tendency to deliberate, reflect, and brood. The one acts objectively, 
the other subjectively. One is what McDougall calls the extrovert type, 
the other the introvert. The Caucasians of southern Europe and the 
Negroes of Africa are extrovert. The Caucasians of northern Europe, 
the Chinese, the Japanese, the Semites, and the North American In- 
dians are introvert. The extrovert type is impulsive, talkative, inter- 
ested in the present, and generally has characteristics of children, 1. e., 
is weak in self-control, inhibition, and self-reliance, and is given to 
violent outbursts of temper as well as to enthusiastic action. The 
Negro seems to be the most pronounced example of the extrovert 
type. 

The introvert type is introspective, inclined to combativeness in the 
realm of ideas, independent of judgment, and manifests a high degree 
of self-reliance and power of inhibition.*® 

As for the psychological traits of the mulatto, they vary with the 
degree and kind of white blood entering into the mixture. Burmeister 
thought that the Negro traits generally predominated. “The male mu- 
latto,’ he said, “is remarkable for his intelligence and the female for 
her social qualities.” ** He also thought that the passions of both races 
were intensified in the mulatto.*? 

Finally, it should be said that some of the traits above enumerated 
as belonging to the Negro are common to ignorant white people or back- 
ward people of any race, and if the traits of the Negro, as herein de- 
fined, are predominantly child-like, one might infer that they are so be- 
cause the Negro is yet undeveloped, and that when he has had proper 
discipline his traits will show the characteristics of the adult, i. e., will 
be indistinguishable from those of the Caucasian. 

It seems very probable that education and contact with the Cau- 
casians will have a tendency to modify the Negro’s traits, and I am cer- 
tain that in the United States natural selection is working towards the 
elimination of certain traits which stand in the way of the Negro’s sur- 
vival. However, judging from what we know of the persistence of the 


“Carr-Saunders believes that temperament and disposition are more im- 
portant factors of success than mere intellect, and that these are heritable and 
vary in different races. The Population Problem, p. 471. 

“Comparative Anatomy and Psychology of the African Negro, p. 21. 

SLOG. D921. 


THE PSYCHE OF THE NEGRO 409 


characteristics of races, even when subjected to new and varying environ- 
ments, as for example in the cases of the Indian and the Jew, I do not 
believe that the characteristics of the Negro will undergo any marked 
change for many generations. 


CHAPTER 53 
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION 


The Function of Crossing among Plants and Animals—Consequences of Crossing 
Near and Distantly Related Types—Importance As a Factor in Crossing of 
the Quality of the Characters Inherited—Biological Considerations Weighing 
Against Amalgamation 


HERE seems to be a general agreement among biologists that the 
function of crossings in the plant and animal world is to increase 
variability and to preserve or strengthen physical vigor, that in all forms 
of life numerous differences exist and that any kind of crossing which 
takes place may have beneficial or injurious consequences, depending 
upon whether the offspring does or does not inherit traits favorable to 
survival, or, in case of artificial crossings, favorable to any result de- 
sired. 

In a state of nature, crossings have been limited to closely related 
types for the reason that widely contrasting types are incapable of 
crossing. 

Darwin thought “that a cross between individuals of the same spe- 
cies, which differ to a certain extent, gives vigour and fertility to the 
offspring, and on the other hand the balance of evidence decidedly 
tends to show that a cross between individuals of different species, or 
even of very distinct varieties of the same species, is by no means bene- 
ficial as a general rule.” ? 

For example, if a stockman wishes to preserve the vitality of his 
herd of Jersey cattle, he will, now and then, introduce Jersey stock 
from another herd, but would not think of introducing Holsteins or 
Durhams. 

“In general,” to quote East and Jones in their book on Inbreeding 
and Outbreeding, “it can be said that differences in uniting germ 
plasms, when not too great, may bring about more efficient development 
and increased fertility. Beyond that critical point of difference both 
fertility and vigor may be decreased, but fertility is usually the first to 
suffer—even complete sterility often being coupled with rampant 
growth.” ? 

*Chatterton-Hill, Heredity and Selection in Soctology, p. 127. 

oll ea ke 

410 


BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION Ail 


The same principle has been applied to man. Topinard, for in- 
stance, asserted that the intermingling of nearly related races is cer- 
tainly good and that of distantly related races certainly bad.* David 
Livingstone once remarked that “God had made the white man, and 
God had made the black, but the devil had made the half-breed.” 

Carr-Saunders illustrates the principle as follows: “Roughly 
speaking there are two possible kinds of crosses between races. First, 
there are crosses between the most clearly distinguished varieties, such 
as white and black. Heterosis, or hybrid vigour, will be exhibited in a 
marked fashion in the first generation. Heterosis, the underlying cause 
of which has only recently become apparent, is always at its height in 
the first cross. The increase of vigour, however, is not long maintained 
in subsequent generations. Further, each type, such as those which 
we are considering, has a series of character complexes, built up 
through ages of selection and compatible with one another, and by 
crossings such complexes are broken apart. The chance of gain, on 
the other hand, through favorable re-combination of characters is 
small. On the average, therefore, the result of such a cross is unfavor- 
able. There may also be crosses between races exhibiting less differ- 
ences. Again, heterosis will be visible on crossing. But in distinction 
to the results of the former kind of cross, the other results may not be 
unfavorable. Great variability may follow such a cross and this is on 
the whole advantageous. Valuable character re-combinations may also 
come to light. Thus we may say that, so long as there is not too great 
a difference between the races which cross, the results are usually 
genetically favorable; there will be the advantage of hybrid vigour, 
though this is always temporary, and there may very possibly be the 
advantage of valuable character re-combinations.”’ * 

The same idea is advanced by McDougall, who says: “The cross- 
ing of the most widely different stocks, stocks belonging to any two of 
the four main races of man, produces an inferior race; but the crossing 
of stocks belonging to the same principal race, and especially the cross- 
ing of closely allied stocks, generally produces a blended subrace supe- 
rior to the mean of the two parental stocks, or at least not inferior.” ® 

Not only from the standpoint of physical vigor, but also from the 
standpoint of mental characters, the crossing of distantly related races 
is held to be detrimental. 

*Eléments d’ Anthropologie générale. 

*The Population Problem, p. 38. 

*The Group Mind, p. 332. 


412 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





“The many elements,” says McDougall, “which go to form the men- 
tal constitution of an individual become, in a mixed race, variously com- 
bined. If the crossed races are very widely different, the results seem 
to be in nearly all cases bad. The character of the cross-breed is made 
up of divergent, inharmonious tendencies, which give rise to internal 
conflict, just as the physical features appear in bizarre combination.” ° 

In reference to the consequences of the crossing of distantly and 
closely related types, East and Jones make the following statement: 
“The world faces two types of racial combination: one in which the 
races are so far apart as to make hybridization a real breaking-down 
of the inherent characteristics of each; the other, where fewer differ- 
ences present only the possibility of a somewhat greater variability as 
a desirable basis for selection. Roughly, the former is the color-line 
problem; the latter is that of the White Melting Pot, faced particu- 
larly by Europe, North America and Australia. 

“The genetics of these two kinds of racial intermixture is as fol- 
lows: Consider first a cross between two extremes, typical members of 
the white and of the black race. In the first generation the individuals 
show a notable amount of heterosis, indicating differences in a large 
number of hereditary factors. They are intermediate in hair form, skin 
color, head shape, and various other physical attributes, in mental capac- 
ity, and in psychical characters in general; although they show ex- 
traordinary physical vigor. In later generations segregation and recom- 
bination in many of these characters can be traced with little diffi- 
culty ; but if one describes the descendants of the cross as a population, 
or even the total characteristics of a single individual, fluctuation around 
the average of the two original races is still the rule. There may be 
an approach to the head form of one race combined with the skin color 
of the other, an approximation of the hair of the one coupled with the 
other’s stature; nevertheless, there is little likelihood of an individual 
return to the pure type of either race. The difficulties involved are those 
described in Chapter VII. The races differ by so many transmissible 
factors, factors which are probably linked in varied ways, that there 
is, practically speaking, no reasonable chance of such breaks in linkage 
occurring as would bring together only the most desirable features, 
even supposing conscious selection could be made. And selection is 
not conscious. Breeding for the most part is at random. The real 
result of such a wide racial cross, therefore, is to break apart those 
compatible physical and mental qualities which have established a 

*The Group Mind, p. 1093. 


BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION 413 


smoothly operating whole in each race by hundreds of generations of 
natural selection. 

“If the two races possessed equivalent physical characteristics and 
mental capacities, there would still be this valid genetical objection to 
crossing, as one may readily see. But in reality the negro is inferior 
to the white. This is not hypothesis or suppositions ; it is a crude state- 
ment of actual fact. The negro has given the world no original contri- 
bution of high merit. By his own initiative in his original habitat, he 
has never risen. Transplanted to a new environment, as in the case 
of Haiti, he has done no better. In competition with the white race, 
he has failed to approach its standard. But because he has failed to 
equal the white man’s ability, his natural increase is low in comparison. 
The native population of Africa is increasing very slowly, if at all. 
In the best environment to which he has been subjected, the United 
States, his ratio in the general population is decreasing. His only 
chance for an extended survival is amalgamation. 

“The United States has been confronted by this grave question for 
some time. In Africa it has hardly yet come to the fore, but within 
three generations it will be recognized as the political and economic 
problem. What the solution will be, no one knows. It seems an un- 
necessary accompaniment to humane treatment, an illogical extension of 
altruism, however, to seek to elevate the black race at the cost of lower- 
ing the white. And the statement is made with all due regard to the 
fact that there are certain desirable characteristics existent in the black 
race, and that unquestionably the two races overlap in general inherent 
capacity. The white race as a whole is not equal to the black race in 
resistance to several serious diseases, as the medical records of the 
United States army show. ‘The two strains have built up disease re- 
sistance along different lines, and the addition of both sets of im- 
munity factors would be desirable. But the practical attainment of such 
a benefit, given the genetic premises, is so improbable as to be negligible, 
apart from other considerations.” * 

Observations and experiments in the crossing of plants and animals 
have brought out the fact that, in the matter of vigor and fertility, the 
results of the crossings of the distantly and closely related types are 
not as uniform as was formerly believed. “There is a popular belief,” 
says Conklin, “that hybrid races are always inferior to pure bred ones, 
but this is by no means the case. Some hybrids are undoubtedly in- 
ferior to either of the parents, but on the other hand some are vastly 

“East and Jones, Inbreeding and Outbreeding, pp. 252-4. 


414 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





superior; only experience can determine whether a certain cross will 
yield inferior or superior types. Society may well attempt to prevent 
those crosses which produce inferior stock while encouraging those 
which produce superior types.’ § 

Some biologists, as for example L. C. Dunn of the Storrs’ Agri- 
cultural Station, do not believe that, from the standpoint of vigor or 
fertility, the hybrids of plants or animals are inferior to their parents. 
In reference to crossings among the races of man, he says: “Are human 
hybrids more vigorous or less than the parent types? Are they under 
any biological handicaps such as infertility? Are the new combina- 
tions of characters in hybrids disharmonious or incompatible? Dog- 
matic answers can certainly not be given from the human data. The 
Boer-Hottentot hybrids and the Norfolk population are certainly at 
least the physical equals of either parent race. In Hawaii the physical 
measurements of hybrids, while they do not indicate a pronounced hy- 
brid vigor, show that the hybrids are not inferior. And in the opinion 
of more than one observer some of the hybrid groups, e. g., the Hawai- 
ian-Chinese, represent a physical improvement of the parent types. 

“Disharmonic types undoubtedly do exist among hybrids, but only 
in the sense that combinations of traits occur which are not normal or 
frequent in purer types. As far as can be ascertained from physical 
measurements these new combinations are not injurious, and no deroga- 
tory significance need be attached to disharmony. It is a normal oc- 
currence after crossing.” ® 

Dunn attaches great importance to the increased fertility which gen- 
erally results from crossings. 

“Striking racial differences exist, which are not abolished, but com- 
bine and endure through cross-matings. These diverse combinations 
and the variability which results may be one condition of evolutionary 
progress in man as in the lower animals and plants. It may be sug- 
gested that in a complex civilization which rests on division of labor, 
variability is even more essential than in more primitive societies. Real 
racial differences may then be the raw materials needed for an enlarg- 
ing society.” 1° 

It is universally understood that race crossing increases variability, 
but an increase of variability does not necessarily imply an improvement 


* Heredity and Evolution in the Development of Man, p. 301. 


°“A Biological View of Race Mixture,” Publications of the American Socio- 
logical Society, Vol. 19, p. 54. 
*® Publications of the American Sociological Society, Vol. 19, p. 56. 


BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION 415 





in racial stock, nor guarantee us against the inheritance of undesirable 
traits. A visit to any of our institutions for the feeble-minded will 
show us striking examples of increased variation due to crossings. The 
introducing of a Holstein bull amongst a herd of Jersey cows might add 
to the vigor or variability of the herd, but would certainly bring down 
the quality of the milk. 

It does not follow that race mixture is a good thing merely be- 
cause animal vigor may be preserved by it. The main consideration in 
the crossing of plants and animals is not the extent of variability nor 
the degree of hybrid vigor, but the quality of the characters trans- 
mitted. 

When we seek by artificial process to improve the breed of chickens, 
hogs, or cattle, we do not assemble a motley collection of all possible 
breeds, but select one type supposed to be superior, or we cross two 
slightly unlike types, segregate the offspring, and breed strictly from 
the selected stock. A prerequisite to the production of any desired type 
of plant or animal is intelligent selection, followed by segregation which 
prevents any crossing with another type. To permit free crossing 
would render impossible the artificial production of any new or im- 
proved type. 

Biologists who favor amalgamation justify their position upon the 
ground that, from their point of view, race crossings have not been 
demonstrated to be bad. In reply to this attitude Holmes remarks: 
“The inheritance of a superior race is a very precious possession to be 
conserved at all costs. The argument from ignorance should not be 
used to defend race crossing because we cannot prove that it is bad; 
it should be used rather to counsel caution because we do not know that 
it is not bad. In the light of our ignorance about race crossing, the 
wisest course is to go slow and play safe. Our ignorance is no justi- 
fication for taking a leap in the dark.” # 

So far as I am able to comprehend the teachings of biological sci- 
ence, the outstanding fact seems to be that plants and animals vary and 
inherit characters according to Mendelian principles and that an im- 
provement in any variety or type can be brought about only by natural 
or intelligent selection and not by miscellaneous crossings. 

By way of summarizing the biological aspect of amalgamation, I 
quote as follows from Arthur Dendy, professor of Zoology in King’s 
College, London: “Whatever may be the selecting agent, there is al- 
ways one thing necessary before it can bring about any improvement, 

™ Studies in Evolution and Eugenics, p. 223. 


416 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





and that is the isolation of the selected variations, the prevention of 
interbreeding with the less favored individuals of the race, so that the 
incipient adaptations shall not be swamped by crossing. For this 
reason the pigeon fancier keeps his birds in separate cages and the 
stock breeder is scrupulously careful to allow no random mating. The 
numerous varieties of domesticated dogs, as is well known, breed freely 
with one another if allowed to do so, and the results are mongrels. 
Similarly, when different varieties of pigeons are mated together the 
offspring tend to revert to the condition of the original wild rock 
pigeon from which all the varieties were derived. . . .” 

“The differences between the various branches of the human family, 
especially as regards mental and moral development, are enormous, and 
there can be no doubt that they are maintained by geographical isola- 
tion. What, then, is to happen now that this isolation is being every 
day more completely abolished? Our modern means of communication 
are rapidly bringing all parts of the world so close together that the 
natural barriers to migration will soon cease to have any importance. 
All races will intermingle; they are already doing so. Under these 
newly arisen conditions, what is to prevent the interbreeding of all 
types of humanity and the gradual establishment of one vast mongrel 
population? Any one who is acquainted with the half-caste inhabitants 
of such a country as, for example, South Africa, will at once realise 
the dangers attendant upon such a state of affairs. A mongrel is no 
more desirable amongst human beings than it is amongst domesticated 
animals. 

“The humanitarian, but utterly unscientific, doctrine that all men 
are equal has much to answer for. If followed out to its logical con- 
clusions it must lead to the general and permanent deterioration of the 
human race, for the highest types of mankind are in a minority, and it 
will be a case of levelling down and not of levelling up.” * 


“The Biological Foundations of Society, p. 168. 
aiid D7, 


CHAPTER 54 
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION 


The Cause of Racial Affinities and Antipathies—Natural Impulses Which Develop 
Consciousness of Kind—Control of Consciousness of Kind over the Social 
and Sexual Relations between Animal Groups—lIllicit Sex Relations between 
Different Races—Operation of Psychological Laws to Prevent Too Intimate 
Inbreeding and Too Distant Outbreeding 


URNING now to the psychological point of view, we learn that 
nature has planted in the animal species and varieties certain dis- 
positions which serve to encourage crossing with varieties offering 
slight contrasts and to prevent crossing with varieties offering wide con- 
trasts. These dispositions give rise to racial and group affinities and an- 
tipathies. The natural disposition of each animal species or variety 
leads in the first place to associational preferences, or to what we may 
call group affinities and antipathies ; and as a consequence of these there 
are developed sexual attractions and aversions between different groups. 
All animals are more or less gregarious, or show a social preference 
for their own kind. If the question be asked, why animals of like kind 
find solace in association the answer would seem to be that the 
contact with their kind gives play to the emotions of sympathy and 
wonder. The sensation of a kindred touch is accompanied by a feel- 
ing of security which relaxes tension and expands sympathy. At the 
same time the contact gives play to the emotion of surprise and wonder, 
and answers to what psychologists used to call the instinct of curiosity. 
The individuals of any group are more or less differentiated, and the 
contrasts excite a general pleasurable stimulation of the emotions. 
In other words, the interest which an individual finds in companion- 
ship with another is due to the refreshment he derives from a certain 
degree of unlikeness. If the unlikeness is too great, a feeling of fear 
or repulsion is awakened. That particular degree of contrast which 
insures pleasure to the members of a herd or group is what we generally 
call likeness. This tendency of like individuals to form groups is what 
Giddings calls consciousness of kind, and what he regards as the most 
fundamental sociological fact. Worms, he tells us, recognize each other 
417 


418 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


by the touch, and so thoroughout the animal kingdom each individual 
tends to flock with its kind. 

The sex relations of animals are determined by their natural group- 
ing or feeling of consciousness of kind. The sex affinities and aver- 
sions of individuals are influenced by the same likenesses and contrasts 
which influence the animal groupings, but they always arise after the 
groups are formed. The sex impulse, which only becomes active at a 
certain age, season, or following a chance affinity, is generally manifested 
within the circle of consciousness of kind of each individual. 

For instance, according to Westermarck, in the forest of Dean, 
the dark and pale colored herds of deer, which have been long kept 
together, have never been known to cross. On the Faroe Islands, the 
half-wild native black sheep are said not to have readily mixed with 
the imported white sheep. “In Circassia, where six sub-races of the 
horse are known, the horses of three of these races, whilst living a 
free life, almost always refuse to mingle and cross, and will even at- 
tack each other.” + It is common knowledge that a mare’s aversion 
to an ass is so strong that it can be overcome only by a ruse. 

The feeling of consciousness of kind controls the sex relations among 
human beings in the same way as among the lower animals. Wester- 
marck tells us that the Indian races of Paraguay “are too proud to 
intermarry with any race of a different color, or even of a different 
stock. In Guiana and elsewhere, Indians do not readily intermix with 
Negroes, whom they despise, . . . in San Salvador . . . a man who had 
intercourse with a foreign woman was killed. Mr. Powers informs us 
of a California tribe who had put to death a woman for committing 
adultery with or marrying a white man; and among the Barolongs, 
a Bechuana tribe, the same punishment was formerly inflicted on any 
one who had intercourse with a European. Among the Kabyles, ‘Je 
mariage avec une negresse west pas defendu en principe; mais le 


famille s’opposerait a une paredle union... . The black and fair 
people of the Philippines have from time immemorial dwelt in the same 
country without producing an intermediate race. . . . And, in Ceylon, 


even those Veddahs who live in settlements, although they have long 
associated with their neighbors, the Singhalese, have not yet intermarried 
with them. 

“Count de Gobineau remarks that not even a common religion and 
country can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the Arab to the Turk, 
of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria, of the Magyar to the Slav. 

* History of Human Marriage, p. 281. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION 41g 


Indeed, so strong, among the Arabs, is the instinct of ethical isolation, 
that, as a traveler states, at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in 
little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk 
or European, but would think herself forever dishonoured if she were 
joined to him in lawful wedlock. 

“Marriages between Lapps and Swedes very rarely occur, being 
looked upon as dishonourable by both peoples. They are equally un- 
common between Lapps and Norwegians, and it hardly ever happens 
that a Lapp marries a Russian. At various times, Spaniards in Central 
America, Englishmen in Mauritius, Frenchmen in Réunion and in the 
Antilles, and Danish traders in Greenland, have been prevented by law 
from marrying natives. Among the Hebrews, during the early days of 
their power and dominion, marriages with aliens seem to have been rare 
exceptions. The Romans were prohibited from marrying barbarians; 
Valentinian inflicted the penalty of death for such unions. Tacitus was 
of opinion that the Germans refused marriage with foreign nations, and 
the like seems to have been the case with the Slavs. . . .? 

“The Ainos not only despise the Japanese as much as the Japanese 
despise them, but are not very sociable among themselves; one village 
does not like to marry into another... 3 

“Everywhere the system of caste seems to have originated in the 
opposition of one race to intermarriage with another. The Sanscrit 
word for caste is “varna,’’ meaning color, which shows how the distinc- 
tion of high and low caste arose in India. That country was inhabited 
by dark races before the fairer Aryans took possession of it; and the 
bitter contempt of the Aryans for foreign tribes, their domineering 
spirit, and their strong antipathies of race and religion, found vent in 
the pride of class and caste distinctions.” * 

The aversion to marrying outside of the circle of consciousness of 
kind is not the result of the sexual instinct, for the reason that this 
instinct is so strong that it often leads to intercourse between individu- 
als belonging to different circles of consciousness of kind, who would 
feel a repugnance to each other so far as any habitual association is 
concerned. Racial antipathy is felt by innumerable individuals whose 
sex instincts have never been awakened. The sentiment of love which 
leads to marriage among highly civilized people is a very complex 
phenomenon involving a variety of emotions other than those related to 


*Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 365. 
* Ibid., p. 367. 
*Tbid., p. 368, 


420 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


sex.5 It is normally awakened by association among individuals within 
the same circle of consciousness of kind; and an individual of one 
circle will generally feel a repulsion to members of other circles in so 
far as any intimate social contact is concerned. The social antipathies 
which races manifest toward each other always develop into a racial 
sentiment against social and marital intermingling wherever two con- 
trasting races face each other in large masses. 

Any intermingling of unlike races in social, as distinguished from 
purely business, relationships, suggests the natural consequence of mis- 
cegenation, and excites a feeling of repulsion and disgust among the 
masses of both races. Wherever, therefore, two widely contrasting races 
are brought together in the same territory it is necessary to observe 
certain social conventions in order to prevent the too frequent explosion 
of indignation and resentment. Rules applying to all alike avoid the 
embarrassment and ruthlessness of individual discriminations. A strict 
obedience to the conventional rules comes to be regarded as a test of 
loyalty to one’s race, and any one who disregards them is apt to be 
looked upon as an apostate and to be penalized by ostracism. 

I wish to make clear the fact that racial antipathies among human 
beings do not arise directly from the sexual instinct, but from a combina- 
tion of other natural dispositions and tendencies which awaken a con- 
sciousness of kind and develop a group sentiment. 

Now there are two circumstances under which consciousness of kind 
fails to develop or breaks down, resulting in the more or less free 
intermingling of diverse races. The first is that of a frontier country 
where the population is more or less heterogeneous. Here it is im- 
possible for each individual to find companionship or to marry within 
his own race, and his sense of race consciousness is lost or overcome 
by his sex impulse. 

The other circumstance is that of an open country where one race 
is widely and thinly dispersed among the masses of another race. For 
instance, in the Sudan region of Africa, a small number of Caucasians, 
perhaps Libyans or Berbers, invaded the country of the blacks and 
scattered themselves as rulers among the dense mass of natives, with 
the result of intermarrying and forming an intermediate type.® 

I believe that the consciousness of kind among men and the lower 
animals, which guides them in the matter of mating, is in entire harmony 
with the laws of progress. We know from history and general ob- 


*Spencer, Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, p. 488. 
*Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. 1, p. 79. 


PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION gai 


servation that races which differ but slightly manifest an attraction for 
each other and freely amalgamate; while those which differ notably 
manifest an aversion to each other and do not amalgamate, or do so 
only under abnormal conditions. Isolation, conquest, slavery, and vice 
are the only means by which amalgamation ever takes place between 
visibly unlike races. Thus we find a perfect agreement between the 
principles of psychology and the principles of biology on the subject 
of race amalgamation. | 

It is sometimes asserted that when two dissimilar races are thrown 
together, it is only the superior one which manifests aversion to social 
and marital intermixture ; and it is often pointed out that in the United 
States, the Negroes rather court than shun social relations with the 
whites. The fact is, however, that both races have the same social and 
marital antipathies, and the same tendency to group according to con- 
sciousness of kind. Every race has its own standards of beauty and 
its own color preference.’ The Chinese dislike the white skin of the 
Europeans, and it is said of an Australian woman who had a child by a 
white man, that she smoked it with oil to give it a darker color.® 

When a very backward race is thrown 1n contact with the masses of 
a race of higher culture it is impressed with its inferiority, and, through 
the feeling of vanity and pride, will try to imitate the superior race, 
and will court sexual relations with it. But one may yield to this vanity 
and pride without changing one’s ideal of beauty or natural preference, 
just as an individual woman of a white race may choose to mate with 
a man personally repulsive to her because of his wealth or other ex- 
traneous possession which appeals to her cupidity. So with the Negro 
race in the United States; some Negro men or women, from considera- 
tions of pride may choose white mates contrary to their natural inclina- 
tion. But I think it is quite obvious, in spite of the generally acknowl- 
edged superiority of the white race, that the mass of Negro men and 
women prefer mating with their own kind. 

Sir Harry H. Johnston says: “The mass of the (Negro) race, if 
left free to choose, would prefer to mate with women of its own 
type.” ® Even mulatto men show a decided preference for mulatto 
women, and black men for black women. 

Again it is often argued that there are no natural racial antipathies 
because, however opposite the races, there is always sexual intercourse 


*Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 257, 263. 
*Thid., p. 264. 
*The Negro in the New World, p. 462. 


422 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


between them, resulting in a large number of hybrids. In reply to this 
argument I would call attention to the fact that the sexual intercourse 
between widely different races is almost always illicit and confined al- 
most entirely to the licentious class of both races in whom the sex 
passion overcomes only momentarily the racial antipathy. It is a matter 
of common observation all around the world that white men addicted 
to vice will have sexual relations with women of other races for whom 
they feel no natural affinity, and toward whom they would feel the 
deepest repugnance at the thought of living with them in the permanent 
relationship of husband and wife. The fact that any two races have 
casual sex relations is no evidence whatever of their lack of social ana 
marital antipathy. ; 

A chief cause of our misunderstanding of the race problem grows 
out of the different feelings which members of the same race manifest 
toward any widely different race with which they come in contact. For 
instance, the Englishman in England who only occasionally sees an 
African or East Indian does not feel the aversion to social contact 
with them which is felt by the Englishman in Africa or India. The 
reason for this difference is that the feeling of aversion to the social 
intermingling of two races never arises unless the races exist together in 
large enough masses to awaken frequent suggestions of consciousness 
of kind, and intermarriage. In case of such massing together, the feel- 
ing of repulsion unconsciously and instinctively arises. For illustration, 
the white people of California feel a social repulsion toward the Jap- 
anese but none toward the Negroes, who are not there in sufficient 
numbers to awaken the feeling; while the white people of the Southern 
states feel a social aversion toward the Negro, but none toward the 
Japanese, whom they rarely see. There are, indeed, a number of very 
highly cultured men in the United States, in England, in France, and in 
Germany, who have not come in contact with the masses of any widely 
different race, and who, therefore, feel no social aversion to other races. 
They imagine that they have arrived at a higher state of moral culture 
than the rest of mankind, and they, therefore, look with condescension 
and condemnation upon people who exhibit such feeling. The fact is 
that all men manifest social aversion to other races under similar condi- 
tions of contact. Northern people of the United States who have taken 
residence in the South spontaneously acquire the same antipathy to the 
Negro as the native whites. If the Negroes were as rare in Mississippi 
as they are in the rural districts of Massachusetts there would be a 
plenty of white people in Mississippi who would feel no social aver- 


PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AMALGAMATION = 423 


sion to them, who would think nothing of sitting at table with them, 
and who would be able to felicitate themselves on their superiority to 
ordinary humanity. 

Viewing the subject of racial contact from every conceivable psycho- 
logical aspect, I find no ground for believing that the Caucasian and the 
Negro will ever amalgamate while they co-exist in large numbers. 


CHAPTER 55 
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 


Question of Importance of Amalgamation As a Factor in the Evolution of 
Culture—Light on the Question from History—Social Conditions Favorable to 
Cultural Advance 


HAT can be said in favor of racial intermixture from the stand- 

point of sociology? Is it not a historical fact that the amalgama- 

tion of races has been the chief factor in the progress of civilization 
throughout the world? 

It is certainly a fact that the history of the world is largely made up 
of race conquests and subjugations, and of racial interminglings and 
amalgamations; and I suppose that among the mass of thinking people 
there is a general conviction that, somehow or other, race interblending 
has been an essential factor in the progress of civilization. At any rate, 
all of the present-day advocates of amalgamation lay stress upon the 
part which race crossing has played in the evolution of culture. 

In setting out to inquire into the soundness of this point of view, 
we must have in mind some definition of the term culture or civiliza- 
tion. For the purposes of this discussion we shall define culture roughly 
as follows: (a) The energy or urge to create, and (b) The expan- 
sion of sympathy through the development of common interests, group 
sentiments, and organizations, and the acquisition of habits, technique, 
patterns, or what the anthropologists call trait-complexes. Primarily 
culture is a subjective phenomenon; secondarily, it is objective, and 
recognizable by tools, machinery, buildings, and all material products 
and contrivances. 

In view of the fact that the kind of culture which spreads itself 
over the world is vastly more vital than any other problem, there is 
urgent need that we know how culture is developed and diffused, and 
what the consequences are of the contact and intermixture of different 
cultures. 

One of the most recent and important developments in anthropology 
is the study of cultural areas, cultural centers, and cultural diffusion.? 

*Wissler, Man and Culture. 
44 


SOGIOLOGICAL: ASPECTS 425 


In a rough way the whole world has been divided into cultural areas, 
and the culture-traits in each area have been catalogued. In this study 
it has been found that culture-traits are everywhere more highly per- 
fected at the center of the culture area than at the periphery. 

Now we are just beginning to understand something about culture 
centers and the important part which they have played, and in the 
future will play, in the progress of civilization. Just as we have 
developed a consciousness of our individual and political responsibility 
and rights, so we are now awakening to a sense of our responsibility 
and rights as participants in a common culture. As it is essential that 
an individual control his personal development and that the State control 
its development, so is it essential that a people protect and control their 
culture. 

“What we were fighting for in the late war,” says Wissler, “was 
the right of Belgium and every other country to possess and cherish 
its own culture.” * Wissler looks forward to a time “when all peoples 
shall have rights to their culture, based upon the facts and conditions 
of culture and not upon the conveniences of relatively few individuals. 
In the same sense that the world rose out of social gloom when it came 
to see the position of the individual, it is now ready to take one step 
more, the consciousness of itself as having and developing cultures, 
and in meeting the challenge of the future by the formulation of culture 
rights.” ® 

It seems to me that the first essential of cultural advance is a fa- 
vorable environment, 1. e., a stimulating climate, a meagerness of re- 
sources demanding strenuous effort, and a geographical situation afford- 
ing contact of people over a wide area, and at the same time affording 
protection from disturbing invaders by natural barriers of water, moun- 
tains, deserts, or forests. If the climatic and geographic factors are 
favorable, the population within the area will, by intercommunication, 
come to have a common culture, i. e., more or less uniform habits, 
methods of exploitation, modes of intercourse, standards of behavior, 
etcetera. The prevalence of the same culture over a wide area is fa- 
vorable to discoveries and inventions which make for cultural advance. 
For a concrete illustration, in the history of white colonization in Amer- 
ica there was a more or less common culture among the inhabitants in 
every locality. The most common material culture product was the 
axe. Now, the fact of this instrument being used by so many indi- 

*Tbid., p. 334. 

5 Tbid., p. 335. 


426 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


viduals over a wide area was highly favorable to innovations and im- 
provements in it. The chances were great that some user of the axe 
would manifest his creative genius by giving it a new shape, or by 
changing its weight, or the curvature of its handle. And each innova- 
tion which proved by experience to be an improvement would be in 
great demand by the woodsmen, and would rapidly spread throughout 
the population; and, in the course of some generations, an axe would 
be produced which was perfectly adapted to its purpose. In fact, that 
is what has happened to the American axe. It has received innumerable 
contributions from expert axemen; it is now the most perfect and most 
beautiful of American tools, and is vastly superior to the axe in any 
other part of the world. It would have been impossible for a perfect 
or standardized axe to develop elsewhere than at the center of the axe- 
complex. 

I think it was under conditions similar to those above named that the 
first steps in culture were made. In the prehistoric stage of evolution 
we notice the beginnings and advancement of culture indicated by prog- 
ress in the invention and use of tools and weapons, and in the dis- 
covery and use of natural resources. There was an eolithic period, 
when man invented nothing, but merely displayed his genius by dis- 
covering natural products which answered to his needs. For tools he 
picked up sticks and rocks which chance threw in his way. Then there 
was a palzolithic period, when man learned to make tools of stone, 
but in a clumsy and rude fashion. A third period was the neolithic, 
when man learned to make a great variety of implements and weapons 
of stone in a very skilful and even artistic manner. Lastly there was a 
metal age, of copper, bronze, iron, etcetera, merging into the era of 
civilization. 

The data upon the movement of races during the prehistoric time 
consist of skeletal remains of man, of man’s tools and implements, and 
the caves in which man dwelt; and these data diminish in number as 
we go back towards the eolithic period, where they are reduced to mere 
fragments of two skeletal remains, and a small collection of stones sup- 
posed to have been used by man. Nevertheless, on the basis of such 
data anthropologists have not hesitated to generalize the movement of 
races, and the distribution of culture throughout the prehistoric period, 
at least so far as Europe is concerned. 

Henry Fairfield Osborn, in his Men of the Old Stone Age, says that 
the two races of the eolithic period, the Heidelberg and the Piltdown, 


SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 427 





did not intermix and both became extinct without leaving descendants.* 

In the palzolithic period the two principal races which flourished 
in Europe were the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon. According to 
Osborn, the former race, like the Heidelberg and Piltdown races, disap- 
peared without mixing with any other race, or leaving descendants.® 
Referring to the Chellean phase of the palzolithic period, he says: 
“This culture marked a distinct and probably a very long epoch of time 
in which inventions and multiplications of form were gradually spread 
from tribe to tribe, exactly as modern inventions, usually originating at 
a single point and often in the mind of one ingenious individual, grad- 
ually spread over the world.’’® And, speaking of the later phases of 
the same period, he does not find “any evidence of the crossing or mix- 
ing of the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthal.”’7 The evolution of art 
among the Cro-Magnons, he says, was autochthonous, and in no way 
related to race-intermixture.® 

T. Erie Peet, in his discussion of the endolithic period (a period cov- 
ering the early use of metals in Italy) points out that its culture was 
continuous, due to trading and commerce, and not to immigration of 
alien races.® 

Now, tentative as any generalization may be in reference to the 
peoples of prehistoric times, it is significant that the data have not 
suggested to any anthropologist the idea that progress in culture has 
been due to race fusions. Without any evidence of racial intermix- 
ture, we observe that the stone axe, flattened on one side, less smooth 
on the other, characteristic of the late phase of the palzolithic period, 
spread over a great area in Europe. And later, when the bow and ar- 
row came into use, that they spread over the world among races which 
were very opposite in type, and which, far from having intermixed, 
had never come into contact.’° 

The bronze culture spread among the Egyptians, Babylonians, Syr- 
ians, Alpines, Nordics, and Mediterraneans in no conceivable rela- 


“Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age, pp. 144, 491. 

*Tbid., pp. 256, 258. Hrdlicka believes that there are traces of the Neander- 
thal race in the physiognomy of some modern Europeans, but says nothing of race 
intermixture. Jbid., p. 257. 

*Ibid., p. 150. 

rabid, D. 272. 

*Ibid., pp. 279, 324. 

’ The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, Ch. XII. 

** Wissler, Man and Culture, p. 131. 


428 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





tionship to amalgamation. The same may be said of the dissemination 
of the use of iron or that of the domestication of the dog and horse." 
As the result of the acquisition of the bow and arrow, and of the 
bronze and iron weapons, there were exterminating wars, conquests, 
and more or less amalgamation; but there is no evidence that racial 
amalgamation preceded the spread of culture or was the cause of it. 

Carr-Saunders is of the opinion that cultural advances among men 
have been mainly due to the accumulation and interchange of tradition, 
and very little to change in the character of the human stock. He says: 
“Though a stimulus may always be detected at work during periods of 
advance, it is by no means always possible to find evidence of favor- 
able germinal change. There is frequently no evidence at all of ger- 
minal change at such periods. In the past no doubt contact often im- 
plied racial intermingling, and, though in the present state of biolog- 
ical knowledge we are justified in supposing that crosses between two 
races not too distant would usually have favorable results, there is no 
sufficient foundation for attributing favorable results to all such inter- 
mingling, as has been done by some authors—von Luschan, for in- 
stance. The conclusion would seem to be that germinal change is 
never more than a contributary cause of advance, and that traditional 
change is the whole explanation of some of such periods.” ?? 

IXven the notion commonly found in histories that warfare and 
conquests have been essential or important means of disseminating cul- 
ture is now called in question by anthropology. In reference to this 
notion, I quote as follows from Clark Wissler’s Man and Culture: 
‘Now it appeared in a previous discussion that culture uniformity and 
political unity do not correlate and that the pursuit of the problems thus 
presented had laid the foundations of the scientific investigation of 
culture. What, then, is the true relation of conquest to the spread of 
culture? 

“Both the data of history and anthropology suggest that the rule is 
for conquest to follow diffusion. As to the fortunes of militarism, the 
facts are plain: time after time it triumphed even to the extent of weld- 
ing all peoples of similar culture and sometimes succeeding in annex- 
ing a few of the nearest wilder peoples. First, it is the nucleus, or the 
central cluster of tribes that is subjected; then attention is given to the 
surrounding ring of tribes. But long before this stage is reached, dif- 
fusion began. So when the military complex comes upon the scene, 


“Wissler, Man and Culture, p. 111. 
“The Population Problem, p. 463. 


SOO ROGICAT Ariel Ss 429 


it needs but to follow the broad, well-blazed trail of spreading culture. 
Rarely does it lead culture even in its assaults upon the wilder folk. 
Indeed it may be doubted if it greatly facilitates diffusion, except as it 
accelerates colonization.” *% 

John Oakesmith in his Race and Nationality boldly asserts that: 
“Institutions and characteristics are not modified by the immission of 
new blood into the bodies of the people who possess them, but by the 
admission of new influences which operate from outside upon the minds 
and bodies of the people.** “The progress of civilization is dependent 
upon the intermingling of different communal traditions,” ?° 

iP) 4176, 


“ Oakesmith, Race and Nationality, p. 146. 
* Ibid., p. 149. 


CHAPTER 56 
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS (CONT.) 


Dependence of the Value of Amalgamation upon the Culture Level of the Races 
Forming the Amalgam—The Effect of Contact of Races on Different Levels 
and on the Same Level of Culture—Beneficial Effects of Amalgamation of 
Races on High Levels of Culture and on Nearly the Same Levels 


F racial intermixture has not been an essential factor in the progress 
of culture has it been a negligible factor? There can be no denying 
that racial intermixture has a reciprocal effect upon the races forming 
the amalgam, but what that effect is must depend upon the character- 
istics and the culture level of each race concerned. 

Leaving entirely aside the debatable question of the inherent su- 
periority or inferiority of races, we can arrive at the consequences of 
racial intermixture by studying the interaction of racial contact on 
different levels of culture, since no two races have the same culture. I 
think it is quite possible to formulate general principles explaining the 
effects of culture contact on different levels; and on such a basis we 
can decide in any given case whether an amalgamation is beneficial or 
injurious. While not pretending to have discovered these general prin- 
ciples, I will venture to offer some tentative generalizations and to 
suggest how they might be supported by historical data. 

First, suppose we consider the effect of contact in the same terri- 
tory of two races on low levels of culture. 

Since neither race brings to the other any new elements of culture, 
there would be no stimulus to cultural advance, and, since aggregations of 
people on low levels of culture have imperfect social organizations, the 
tendency would be toward group conflicts, community isolation and eco- 
nomic and social instability, preventing the development of common 
tradition, and ending in social stagnation. An irregular and undevel- 
oped system of communication would limit personal contact to narrow 
circles, and render impossible the first essential to cultural advance, to 
wit: a culture disseminated over a wide area. 

Instances of such results of culture contact on low levels are found 

430 


SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS A431 


abundantly in India, in Central Africa and the Sudan, in North Amer- 
ica among the Indians, in Asia among the pastoral nomads, and in 
Europe among the primitive races of the great northern plain. 

In the case of a high culture predominating over a low culture in 
the same territory, the result is a temporary decline of culture of the 
race on the higher level, followed by renascence, but a decline of cul- 
ture of the race of the lower level without renascence. 

Because of the injurious consequences of the assimilation of such 
opposite cultures, it is the natural tendency of the people so juxtaposed 
to protect themselves by segregation and the development of a caste 
system. 

The reasons for the injurious consequences to the race on the higher 
level are as follows: 

(1) It assimilates the worst elements of the lower culture through 
contact of the degenerate representatives of both groups, with the bet- 
ter elements remaining apart. 

(2) The segregation of races limits the area of common culture to 
racial boundaries, and sets up dual standards and ideals, while the de- 
fenseless position of the race of lower culture tempts the one of higher 
culture to compromise its standards in the interest of exploitation. 

(3) The dominance which the race of higher culture exercises over 
the one of lower culture develops in the former a prideful, haughty, 
and often bullying spirit, narrows its sympathies, imprisons its spir- 
itual life, and lulls to sleep its impulse to create. 

The recovery from the downward tendency is always slow, and 
comes only through suffering and heroic sacrifices in the effort to 
raise the culture level of the whole population. But the renascence 
must always proceed under handicaps as long as the two cultures re- 
main unassimilated. 

The reasons for the decline of the race on the lower level are: 

(1) A too sudden breaking down of the standards and folkways, 
resulting from a sense of race inferiority. 

(2) The eagerness to imitate the people of high culture, resulting 
in the assimilation of their vices. 

(3) The feeling of despair cr hopelessness in view of the wide dis- 
tance between the two cultures, resulting in the extinction of the im- 
pulse to create. 

Instances of the results of such contact are found in Africa and 
Australia, where the whites have dominated over the blacks; in Amer- 
ica, where the whites have dominated over the Indians; in India, where 


432 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





the Aryans have dominated over the Dravidians; and in Japan, where 
the yellow race has dominated over the white Ainu. 

Commenting on the injurious effects of the contact of civilized 
people upon backward people, the German economist, Bucher, says: 
“Tf, since their acquaintance with European civilization, so many prim- 
itive peoples have retrograded and some even become extinct, the cause 
lies, according to the view of those best acquainted with the matter, 
chiefly in the disturbing influence which our industrial methods and 
technique have exerted upon them. We carried into their childlike 
existence the nervous unrest of our commercial life, the hurried hunt 
for gain, our destructive pleasures, our religious wrangles and animos- 
ities. . ... Under these conditions has he (the primitive man) gone 
to ruin, just as the plant that thrives in the shade withers away when 
exposed to the glare of the noon-day sun.” + 

If the contact of races on such disparate levels of culture has the 
consequences above outlined, it seems probable that like consequences 
would follow from the presence of widely opposite cultures which have 
arisen among people of the same race and nation. 

For example, let us turn to the contact of cultures in any of our 
so-called highly civilized nations. Here do we not find evidence of a 
strangling of culture on both the higher and lower levels? Where the 
cultural differences are great, they imply great inequality in opportunity 
and in the distribution of wealth. The classes at the social top are lulled 
to sleep by the security of their position and lose the incentive to cre- 
ate, while those at the bottom are discouraged because of the great dis- 
tance which separates them from the top. The classes at the bottom 
tend toward a caste status and the work they have to do, becoming more 
automacic by machinery and system, offers little opportunity for in- 
centive or for the expression of the impulses of pugnacity, curiosity, 
self-assertion, and acquisition which are essential to human efficiency 
and contentment. The repression of these impulses constrain the masses 
on the lower economic level to find an outlet in vice, crime, and class- 
warfare. And finally the flames of aspiration are quenched. 

Free intermingling takes place only among the degenerate repre- 
sentatives of both levels of culture. The feeble-minded, ignorant, and 
economically weak classes on the lower level offer irresistible tempta- 
tions to exploitation to the egoistic, predatory, and morally perverted 
individuals on the higher level. Any class which is rendered secure by 


* Industrial Evolution, p. 82. For fuller discussion of this kind of contact see 
Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. 1, Ch. XXXIX. 


SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 433 


great fortunes is always hampered in the development or maintenance 
of high standards, and can hardly escape the prideful and exclusive 
spirit which sets up barriers to contact and narrows sympathy and 
outlook. 

The demoralizing effect of widely contrasting groups in the same 
political boundary is shown glaringly in the fine arts, where the pre- 
ponderating demands of the opulent class lower the standards, sub- 
ordinating substance to form, and moral essence to the pleasure of the 
senses. 

The class of people of low economic status are driven in self-de- 
fense to develop a strong class spirit which, as the class spirit of the 
more favored people, makes also for narrowness of sympathy and 
outlook. 

Finally, the barriers between the higher and lower classes, the con- 
flicting interests and the alienation of sympathy, prevent the develop- 
ment of a common tradition and idealism which are indispensable to 
cultural progress. 

On the other hand, in a society where opportunities are open there 
can never be great contrasts in the culture levels of the population, the 
intermingling will be free and assimilation rapid, with everybody re- 
ceiving stimulus to express whatever genius he may possess. 

Therefore, we seem to find that the general principle governing the 
contact of races on different levels of culture applies also to the con- 
tact of different classes of people within the same race and nation, this 
general principle being that contact within the same territory of dis- 
tantly related cultures is detrimental to progress, while the contact of 
nearly related cultures is stimulating to progress. 

The renascence of a people representing extremes of culture is only 
possible through a consciousness of the evil consequences, and a heroic 
effort to change the conditions. The great difficulty is that such a 
people may not have the intelligence to associate their suffering with 
its causes. A renascence of both classes would be possible only in case 
they were composed of the same race or of races closely akin, afford- 
ing opportunities for free social intermingling, and intermarriage. 

If it be said that all civilizations have been characterized by con- 
tact of opposing cultures in the form of classes and castes, and that 
such contact has been, in some instances at least, consistent with con- 
tinuous ascent in culture, I admit the fact, but would contend that 
instances of continuous ascent have been among nations where the 
people forming the classes and castes have been of the same race, and 


434 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





that otherwise, as in India, there has been no continuous ascent, but 
stagnation. 

In case of a race of low culture predominating over one of high 
culture, the result is a decline of the race on the higher level without 
renascence, unless the race on the lower level is eliminated or is able 
to rise to the higher level. The reasons for the decline are general im- 
poverishment and lack of opportunities and incentive, following the 
triumph of the inferior culture. 

The race on the lower level also suffers decline, but may be followed 
by renascence, the extent of which depends upon the capacity of the 
race for adapting itself to the new environment, and especially the pos- 
sibility of complete assimilation of the blood of the other race. The 
reason for the decline of the race on the lower level is the outburst of 
lust and sensuality which the opportunity to exploit provokes, and the 
sudden breaking down of old mores which unchains all of man’s worst 
passions. 

A renascence of this race is only possible after a long period of time 
allowing opportunity for assimilation, and for the growth of a new 
tradition embodying readjusted standards, patterns, and institutions. 

Some of the instances of such dominance of low over high culture 
are as follows: The conquest of the Chinese by the Mongols; of the 
Sumerians by the Semites in Mesopotamia; of the Egyptians by the 
Hyksos, by the Libyans, and by the Nubians; of the Roman Empire 
by the Nordic barbarians, and the dominance of the Negro over the 
Caucasian in the island of Haiti, and in the Southern United States 
during the period of Reconstruction. 

In the case of intermingling in the same territory of races on high 
levels of culture, the effect is not to lower the culture but to arrest or 
slow up its advance. No matter how many admirable elements of cul- 
ture each race may possess, its further progress is retarded during the 
period of mutual assimilation which necessarily brings about disruption 
and confusion of mores, and a general unsettling of standards and 
ideals. Each race has a tendency to segregate itself and to hold on 
stubbornly to its venerable traditions, and also each race has a different 
aptitude for assimilation. During the process of assimilation, the handi- 
cap to an advance in culture is the absence of a common tradition, em- 
bodying common models, trait-complexes, and ideals. Instead of a 
common bond uniting all, there are isolated and antagonistic culture- 
groups which prevent the growth of a common culture. In each race 
the creative energy is diverted from new and higher paths of culture to 


SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 435 


a futile and injurious struggle to preserve the old, and to obtain su- 
premacy over rival cultures. These handicaps to progress are irremedi- 
able until the lapse of an indefinite period of time during which one 
type of culture is able to absorb and obliterate the other. 

The best example of such intermingling of races is found in the 
United States, where more races on higher levels of culture have come 
together than elsewhere in the world; and here we observe all of the 
strife, and unsettling of traditions and standards, which inevitably arise 
from such racial intermingling; and we also observe the handicaps to 
an advancement of our culture which the general confusion entails. 
Take as one illustration, our recent behavior in connection with the 
World War. Now, | think there can be no doubt of the fact that our 
entrance into that war was tardy almost to an extent fatal to western 
civilization, and that the reasons justifying our entrance at the last mo- 
ment (aside from our anger at repeated insults to our flag) were as 
valid in 1914 as in 1917; but the chief reason we could not rise prompt- 
ly to our duty in this matter was the presence in our population of races 
with traditional animosities toward the Allied nations, and the fear of 
our politicians of losing the vote of these races. And, after getting 
into the war, by being goaded and spat upon until we no longer had 
any self-respect, and, after sitting with our feet under the peace table 
with the burden upon us of assuming our obligations for the removal 
of the causes of future wars, and for the reconstruction of the prostrate 
world, we withdrew our pedal extremities and hastened back to our 
flesh pots. Our excuse for this was a pretense of alarm over the power 
to be granted to the proposed League of Nations, but the invalidity of 
such an excuse is shown in the evident willingness of the covenanters of 
the League to accept any reservations or amendments which we might 
propose, and the fact that, having rejected the League, we have inti- 
mated no willingness upon any terms whatever to enter into any per- 
manent affiliation with other nations in the interest of peace. Of course, 
it is charged that our failure to join the League was due to President 
Wilson’s stubbornness in refusing to accept emasculatory reservations, 
but the real fact is that we had racial elements in our population an- 
tagonistic to the Allied powers; and that our politicians of both dom- 
inant parties were willing to pander to these elements for the sake of 
their continuance in office. 

Nothing could better illustrate the handicap to cultural advance of 
the intermingling of heterogeneous races, upon whatever higher levels 
they may stand. We shall have to remain a hermit nation until our 


436 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


heterogeneous racial elements have had time to develop a unified cul- 
ture and tradition. 

Our idea of America as a melting pot for all the races of the world 
is sound enough within limits, but any melting pot is not only liable to 
boil over if overfed, but liable to distill a hell-broth, like the witches’ 
cauldron in “Macbeth,” if its ingredients are ill-chosen. 

Among other examples of intermingling of races on high levels, 
we may mention the French and English in Canada, the English and 
Dutch in Colonial New York and in South Africa, the Spanish and 
Italians in Argentina, and the Teuton and Slav in what was formerly 
Austria-Hungary. 

The intermingling of races on high levels of culture is favorable to 
continuous advance in civilization only when the races concerned are 
nearly alike in type and culture, and when the assimilation is not too 
rapid, nor on too large a scale. Carr-Saunders remarks: “In order 
that the contact should be effective it is necessary that the differ- 
ences between the cultures should not be too great.” ? ! 

The flowering period in every nation comes only after its tradition 
has had time to ripen. The elements of any tradition must become 
assimilated, sifted, and harmonized, and this ripening process can never 
take place under conditions of violent or persistent shocks from the im- 
pact of foreign elements. A certain degree of isolation is necessary 
for a nation, as for an individual, in order to permit the development 
of its personality and its innate genius. 

“The words, German, French, English,” says Humphrey, “are as- 
sociated in our minds with distinctive social characters. These im- 
pressions are based upon fact, and there need be no prejudice in them. 
. . . Each has come to flower after the manner induced by its own par- 
ticular inheritance values, and is not destined to flower again after the 
manner of any other.” ® 

Concerning the question of the general mixing of races and cul- 
tures, John B. Crozier, an English author, offers the following reflec- 
tions: “Now, what I venture to affirm .. . is, that of all the political 
curses which can befall a nation this mixing of inherently antag- 
onistic races, colours, creeds and codes of morality, is the one which, 
when once it has been allowed (it matters not for what reason), is of 
all political complications the most irremediable by any and every known 
instrument for the uplifting of mankind—whether by the exhortations 


*The Population Problem, p. 425. 
* Mankind: Racial Values and the Racial Prospect, p. 117. 


SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 437 


of the pulpit or press, by legislation, by the good will of all concerned, 
or even (if the races are any way evenly matched) by physical force 
itself, short of a war of extermination—as, indeed, the Negro problem 
in America, the Jewish problem on the Continent, the mixture of races 
and creeds in Austria-Hungary, in the Balkans, in Ireland, and in India, 
bear only too eloquent and despairing witness.” * 

The reason that race mixture will not work is: “that the pure white 
of Justice which is believed to be the remedy for all political evils will 
be stained and degraded by the impure colours of the mixture into 
which it has to plunge and dye its hands, long before these mixtures 
will admit of justice being applied to them; and further, that the high- 
er moral code of nations, instead of being raised by the attempt to ap- 
ply it, will during the progress of the experiment, become more and 
more degraded, until it descends with its lynchings, and homicides in 
its train, to the level of barbarism again. My contention, in other 
words, is that the application of pure justice to these mixtures can 
never get a foothold at all, but will be blocked at every turn from the 
start; and that to imagine or expect otherwise is of all delusions and 
utopias the most hopeless—besides being fraught with the most ter- 
rible consequences to the posterity of any and every nation that em- 
Darksvonpitiast yt. 

“The mere presence of alien races and colours in sufficient num- 
bers in the same area is enough to work its damning effects even with- 
out intermarriage, the vote, or social promiscuity. For just as the pig- 
eon-fanciers tell us that you can spoil a particular strain by keeping 
other breeds alongside of it, even when there is no intermixture in the 
mating, so all we should have to do in England, for example, would 
be to admit a sufficient number of Kaffrs into the country to do menial 
or unskilled labor, and a sufficient number of Chinese or Japanese to 
do the more refined and skilled forms, when it could safely be pre- 
dicted that within a generation hardly a self-respecting Englishman, 
short of starvation, would be found to do a stroke of menial labour for 
love or money—as was seen in the Southern States of America before 
the war, and as we see, in a way, in the South Africa of to-day. . . .° 

“Tf you have whites, Negroes, Chinese, Mohammedans and Hindoos 
confronting one another in the street, and spitting in each others’ faces 
as they pass, the amount of social justice that either gods or men can 


*Crozier, Sociology Applied to Practical Politics, p, 121, 
°Tbid., p. 122, 
*Tbid., p. 125, 


438 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

get out of such a relationship will quickly be discovered to differ toto 
coelo from what can be got without effort, or strife, from the simple 
relations of fellow citizens of the same blood, colour, religion and code 
of social morality on the same area of political soil.’ 

“Until the Millennium comes there is no political complication which 
will more surely act as a direct incentive to murder, anarchy, and every 
form of moral degradation, than these unblest and thrice-accursed 
unions. The whole scheme of Nature goes dead against them, and all 
history is strewn with the ruins of the nations that have either know- 
mgly encouraged or unwillingly have been forced to submit to 
Lette se é 

“The age of collossal mushroom empires made up of every variety 
of admixture of races and colours went out with the Roman rule; and 
from that time to this, the evolution of civilization has made steadily 
in the direction of separating out men of the same race, colours, social 
and moral codes, and in consolidating them and keeping them apart as 
separate nationalities.” ® 

The same general conclusions may be reached if we use the term 
“standards” instead of “culture” in evaluating the effects of racial con- 
tact. 

Every race or nation has its traditional standards which it consid- 
ers superior to any other, and which it is eager to impart to the rest 
of mankind. 

Now, if a race of high standards happens to predominate in a coun- 
try over a race of low standards, the inevitable result will be an effort 
of the former to enforce its standards on the latter. What would this 
effort accomplish for the race of low standards? 

Professor T. N. Carver answers the question for us: ‘Nothing is 
any more certain than that this would result in their speedy extinction. 
So far as the world has any definite experience, the attempt to force a 
rigid standard of conduct upon those weak peoples who have lived under 
a loose standard is never successful. It is about as difficult for a race 
to survive an enforced change of social standards as to survive a geo- 
logical cataclysm.” ?° 

If in a business affair we see one man actuated by scrupulous in- 
tegrity, and another willing to stoop to any unfair method, we can get 


"Crozier, Sociology Applied to Practical Politics, p. 126. 
* Ibid., p. 113. 

* Ibid., p. 126. 

* Carver and Hall, Human Relations, p. 202. 


SOGIOLOGICAL/ ASPECTS 439 
an idea of the effect of contact of two races having different standards. 
It is evident that if the race of the higher standard is to compete with 
that of the lower, it must be dragged down toward the level of the 
lower, or it will be worsted. Take for example, the difference in what 
we call the standard of living of people. ‘Other things being equal,” 
says Carver, “a race with a cheap standard of living, provided it does 
not interfere with its working capacity, will tend to drive out a race 
with an expensive standard of living. The Japanese in California, 
having a cheaper standard of living,—that is, being willing to marry 
and multiply on smaller incomes than Americans,—will tend not only 
to underbid Americans for positions, or to outbid them in buying land, 
but to outbreed them as well, producing larger families and increas- 
ing from generation to generation at a higher rate. The inevitable re- 
sult of this would be to displace the American population and make this 
continent a Japanese colony, as it was made a European colony a few 
centuries ago by the coming of [‘uropean settlers. There are only two 
possibilities of avoiding this under the unrestricted immigration of 
peoples. The Japanese standard of living must be made as expensive 
as the American, or the American standard of living must be made as 
cheap relatively to productive power as that of the Japanese. There 
is no third alternative except the gradual giving way of the Americans 
before the Japanese. Whether it be the Japanese, the Chinese, the 
Hindu, or the Afghan standard of living that is in competition with the 
American, the principle is the same, and the results would be the 
same.” 14 

The same principle applies to any other kind of standard. People 
of high standards cannot compete with people of low standards without 
injurious or fatal consequences, and therefore the first obligation of a 
people on a high standard is to protect themselves from low-standard 
competitors. 

Clark Wissler, in speaking of the culture center to which we Amer- 
icans belong, i. e., the culture of North Europe, says that its preserva- 
tion is the most important problem for the future of our civilization. 
While he does not contend that the race which at present bears this 
culture is superior in capacity to all other races, he reminds us that it 
so happens that the Nordic race is inheritor of this culture and is in- 
separably bound up with it. 

“So the Nordics stand out as the new generation in the family of 
the world, the hope of the immediate future; it is theirs to carry for- 

“Carver and Hall. op. cit., p. 212, 


440 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

ward the lamp of civilization, so that when their strength is spent, it 
may be safely passed to some fresh and youthful hand. Faced with 
such a responsibility, it would be criminal not to give the best thought 
of the time to the conservation of whatever virtues this stock possesses. 
To this end the research of the future should be directed, as energeti- 
cally as it is now to the discovery of new ways for burning up the coal 
supply of the world, for what shall it profit if we so spread this great 
fire that the race itself is burned up?” !? 

In so far as difference of culture influences amalgamation there is 
reason to believe that amalgamation will be less common in the future 
than it has been in the past. Frontier conditions which jumble races 
and cultures are everywhere passing away, and people are becoming 
more and more rooted to their geographical and political territories. 

The races and culture groups, instead of blending and forming one 
homogeneous mass, are becoming more and more differentiated. “The 
mere fact,” says Mitchell, “that nations occupy different geographical 
areas brings about a relative isolation of the peoples, for most indi- 
viduals of modern populations are as surely fixed to their native soil 
as rooted plants and slow-moving animals. At first sight it would 
seem as if modern man, with his greater powers of prevision, intelli- 
gence and mechanical locomotion, must be free from limits of geog- 
raphy. But it is not so. An animal or a savage has only the con- 
venience of the moment to tie him to any spot, and as his world is little 
more than his own skin, wherever he is able to find food and shelter, 
he is at home. Modern man is bound to his locality by a thousand 
chains, forged by his more complex needs and emotions. In his case, 
moreover, there exist causes of isolation other than those found amongst 
animals. First there is language, with all its implications of thought 
and feeling, memories of past history, political and social ideals, dif- 
ferences that act strongly against freedom of intercourse, even where 
geographical barriers do not exist... . 

“Even when the frontiers are mere lines drawn on a map, indiffer- 
ent to physical or racial features, the nations stand back to back, each 
facing its own capital and in every way add to the difficulties of inter- 
course and so secure those conditions under which divergent modifica- 
tion is most rapid.” #8 

The foregoing general principles, setting forth the effect of contact 
of races on difference levels of culture, harmonize with the principles 


“4 Wissler, Man and Culture, p. 359. 
* Mitchell, Evolution and the War, p. 69, 


SOCIOLOGICAELASPECTS 441 





of biology and psychology in supporting the thesis that the contact of 
nearly related races is advantageous, and of the distantly related races, 
detrimental; and, therefore, the conclusion seems to be warranted that 
the amalgamation of distantly related races would be, from the cultural 
point of view, a catastrophe. 

The disinclination to social intermingling and to intermarriage be- 
tween races strikingly unlike in physical type is not in the nature of a 
“prejudice” which may be outgrown, or uprooted by enlightenment. A 
race on a low level of culture is bound together by a single tie—that 
of common racial sympathy, and, because this tie is based upon visible 
likeness and is not weakened by any ties which separate the masses into 
cultural groups, it is more apt to act en masse, and to yield to crowd 
contagion. On the other hand, a race on a high level of culture is less 
susceptible to race cohesion because of the innumerable interests which 
divide it into economic and social classes, political factions, and scien- 
tific, philosophical, and religious schisms. Often an individual of a 
race on a high level of culture will sacrifice his race to his class, or his 
culture. Nevertheless, a race on a high level of culture has, upon the 
whole, an intensified racial consciousness and pride because of its 
ability to distinguish other than the physical traits of any other race 
and its veneration for the ever-increasing traditions of its own handi- 
work. Even races which differ but slightly in visible traits often mani- 
fest a jealousy of one another which incites them to destructive compe- 
tition, and sometimes to warfare. 

The aversion which unlike races feel to social intermingling is due 
to their consciousness of difference, which arises spontaneously from 
the feeling in each race of “consciousness of kind,’ and wherever two 
races come in contact in sufficient masses, this consciousness of differ- 
ence is felt. In all parts of the United States we observe this social 
aversion showing itself wherever the Negro in considerable numbers 
comes in contact with the whites. “Human nature,’ says Ray Stan- 
nard Baker, “is essentially the same in Philadelphia, or in Charleston, 
in New Orleans or in Cape Town. Where groups of whites and blacks 
are brought together in these widely separated parts of the globe they 
will in all probability behave in much the same way under similar cir- 
cumstances. The frank acknowledgment of this fact is the only basis 
for the proper comprehension of this infinitely complex question of 
race relationship.” 14 

The antipathy between the whites and the Negroes is not confined 

“ Following the Color Line, p. 177. 


442 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


to the United States. It may be seen in full force in Africa, in the 
West Indies, Brazil, Cuba, and wherever the whites and blacks are 
thrown together. The French have “jim-crow” steamers on the Con- 
go,’ and in West Africa it has been the unwritten law among the 
French that one never takes off his hat to a member of the black 
race.1° The German people, who have had but slight contact with the 
Negro, protested loudly to the Allied powers against the occupation 
of Germany by colored troops. Twenty important women’s societies 
in Germany combined into a national union to appeal to the public 
sentiment of the world against this humiliation and outrage.*’ Opposi- 
tion to social intermingling is everywhere manifested between races 
with marked differences. It is shown between the whites and the yel- 
low Filipinos, who are “in many instances superior in education and 
training to the underbred Americans who seek to draw the color line.” 18 
The American whites show a marked aversion to the Chinese and Jap- 
anese in California; and the English whites in India show a like aver- 
sion to the brown Hindus. 

The aversion of widely contrasting human races to intermingling 
socially is not a species of narrowness, nor is it evidence of a deficient 
humanitarian feeling. Since, as stated in preceding chapters, the in- 
termingling of opposite types of men and culture is detrimental to 
progress, the refusal of an individual to associate with members of 
another race in such a way as would naturally lead to racial intermix- 
ture is entirely consistent with humanitarianism. ‘The interest or good 
of any species or race is of far more importance than that of any mem- 
ber of it. Therefore the observance of conventions tending to prevent 
intermarriage between the whites and the blacks is both rational and 
altruistic. 

Now and then we meet an individual of very pronounced humani- 
tarian impulses and of very commendable religious zeal who speaks, 
writes, and acts in reference to racial contacts in a way which only adds 
to the confusion and difficulties of the problem, because he has a con- 
viction that his religion enjoins him to treat all other human beings as 
brothers, and that true brotherhood calls for free and unrestrained as- 
sociation with all people of whatever condition or race. 

Missionaries of this type went into the Southern states during the 


* Kingsley, West African Travels, p. 93. 

* Adamson, Voyage to the Senegal, p. 50. 

™ Survey, Aug. 2, 1920, p. 580. 

* Henry P. Willis, Our Philippine Problem, New York, 1905, p. 250. 


SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS 443 





Reconstruction period, and, by reason of their mistaken ideas of 
brotherhood, stirred up ill-feeling between the whites and blacks where 
formerly good feeling prevailed. 

The spirit of brotherhood which the Christian religion inculcates 
does not mean that, in social relations of an intimate kind, we should 
have no preferences but should lock arms with, and bring into the in- 
violable circle of our domestic hearths, as constant companions, any 
human beings, whatever their color or race character. It is possible for 
one to live according to the Golden Rule, and fulfil all of his obliga- 
tions to his fellow-men without adopting the policy of indiscriminate 
social intermingling outside of the circle of his own race. One may 
show all proper respect and a true affection for individuals whom he 
would not like to offer the freedom of his home. In many cases there 
is a complete social separation of Negroes and white people without 
the least sacrificing of any natural affection which may have developed 
between them. I know of some Negroes toward whom I feel an af- 
fection not unlike that I feel for my blood-relations, and for whom I 
would make any reasonable sacrifice. And I, in fact, communicate to 
them my feeling of devotion, and they communicate their like feeling 
to me, and, under whatever circumstances arise, I am free to do for 
them whatever I might do for any white person without violating 
any social convention or subjecting them to humiliation. On the social 
question we understand each other, and it is never a cause of embar- 
rassment to us. 

A man violates no religious or moral principle in limiting his habit- 
ual associations to persons for whom he feels some special affection or 
attraction. Everywhere in the world the social groups and culture- 
groups, comprising individuals bound together by like feelings and spe- 
cial interests, have been among the most essential factors in advancing 
civilization and in perfecting human character. The promiscuous inter- 
ningling of people in the domestic and strictly social relationships would 
be disastrous to civilization, even if all the people were of one race. 
We can and do meet all of our obligations to the sick, the deformed, 
the decrepit, and the criminal without issuing an invitation to miscel- 
laneous humanity to eat at our table and to be the companions of our 
wives and daughters. Outside of the strictly social relationships, a 
man’s religion or moral sense often impels him to mingle with, and 
serve, all classes and races of people. 

The namby-pamby religious zealot who would solve the race problem 
by urging, or compelling by law, the indiscriminate social intermixture 


444 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


of races is like the man who would bring about harmony in the feline 
world by tying together peaceful cats by their tails and hanging them 
over the clothesline. 

In insisting on the ineradicable preference of each race for social 
intermingling and intermarriage within its own kind, I do not wish 
to be understood as implying that there is not very often developed 
out of this a race prejudice which is irrational and indicative of lack 
of human sympathy. It is likely to lead to disparagement of merit in 
other races than our own, to acts of hostility, to unfair methods in 
business competition and in all spheres of rivalry. A preference, or 
a selectiveness of any kind, which goes beyond what is absolutely nec- 
essary for the protection of racial integrity, and the domestic sanctu- 
ary, is the mark of a narrow mind and a cold heart. 


CA DE nga 
EXTENT OF AMALGAMATION 


Decline of Lawful Marriage Shown by Statistics of Intermarriage—Excess of 
Number of Marriages between White Women and Negro Men over Number 
Between Negro Women and White Men—lInferior Character of the Whites 
and Blacks Who Intermarry—Marked Diminution of Illicit Intercourse be- 
tween the Races 


OMING now to the extent of amalgamation of the Negro and 
Caucasian in the United States, we find that cases of intermar- 
riage and also of licentious intercourse are becoming more rare. 

From the earliest times the marriage of Negroes with white per- 
sons in this country was considered highly undesirable, and in the 
Colonial period such marriage came to be prohibited by law in nearly 
every colony. As to the number of marriages between blacks and 
whites in Colonial times there are no statistics; but the references to 
such marriages in the records and literature of that period indicate that 
they were very rare, and aroused indignant protests from the white 
people. Such marriages as did take place in those early days seemed 
to have involved only the lowest class of whites. Williams, in his His- 
tory of the Negro nm America, referring to the intermarriage of some 
white women and Negro men, says: “Many of the women had been 
indentured as servants to pay their passage to this country, some had 
been sent as convicts, while still others had been apprenticed for a term 
laVeaTs 46" 

Brackett, in his study of the Negro im Maryland, refers to similar 
marriages of serving-women from England and Negro men.? 

Edward B. Reuter, in his book, The Mulatto in the United States, 
says in regard to the Colonial period: ‘There seems to be absolutely 
no evidence of intermarriage of the mixed sort in which the white con- 
tracting party was not of the lowest and usually of a vicious class. 

“But whatever little intermarriage may have taken place between 
the Negroes and servant class of whites in early colonial times, it de- 

*Vol. 1, p. 240. 

“Md Sah Wea) 

445 


446 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


creased to almost absolutely zero as the status of the Negro became fixed 
and better understood. The spirit of fellowship that at first existed be- 
tween the slaves and the indentured servants, imported criminals, pau- 
pers, and prostitutes, gradually gave place to the feeling of bitter hatred 
that, throughout the days of slavery, characterized the relations of the 
‘poor whites’ and the Negroes.” ® 

EK. R. Turner, in his study of the Negro in Pennsylvania, refers to 
the attitude of the people of that state toward intermarriage of blacks 
and whites as follows: “After a while a strong feeling was aroused, 
so that in 1821 a petition was sent to the Legislature, asking that mixed 
marriages be declared void, and that it be made a penal act for a Negro 
to marry a white man’s daughter. In 1834 such a marriage provoked 
a riot at Columbia; while in 1838 the subject caused a vehement out- 
burst in the Constitutional Convention then assembled. Three years 
later a bill to prevent intermarriage was passed in the House, but lost in 
the Senate. From time to time thereafter petitions were sent to the 
Legislature, but no action was taken; the obnoxious marriages continu- 
ing to be reported, and even being encouraged by some extreme advo- 
cates of race equality. Nevertheless, what the law left undone was 
largely accomplished by public sentiment and private action. As time 
went on marriages of white people with Negroes came to be considered 
increasingly odious, and so became far less frequent. When a case oc- 
curred, it was usually followed by swift action and dire vengeance. The 
fact that a white man was living with a Negro wife was one of the 
causes of the terrible riot in Philadelphia in 1849.” * 

Since the Civil War and the emancipation of the Negroes, the 
statutes in the Northern states prohibiting intermarriages have been 
abolished. But the sentiment against intermarriage of whites and 
blacks is still sufficiently strong to render such unions very rare. In 
the Northern and Western states the numerical inferiority of the Negro 
population brings about an indifference on the part of white people 
to the few intermarriages which may take place. 

Frederick Hoffman collected available data on the mixed marriages 
in the United States up to 1895; and his figures showed that marriages 
between whites and blacks were on the decline in every state where 
statistics on the subject had been collected. His investigation covered 
the marriage records of Michigan from 1874 to 1893; Rhode Island 


be dae. 
“Pp. 195-6. 


EXTENT OF AMALGAMATION 447 





from 1881 to 1893; Connecticut from 1883 to 1893, and the city of Bos- 
ton from 1855 to 1890.6 Baker gives Boston figures to 1905.° 

In the West, where the number of mulattos is relatively greater than 
in the North or the South, the presumption is that the number of mixed 
marriages is also greater. Unfortunately the marriage records give no 
information as to the race, and there is no way of ascertaining the ex- 
tent of intermarriage except by private observations and investigations. 
A recent study of the intermarriage of whites and Negroes made by 
a graduate student of the University of Minnesota, indicates that the 
number of such marriages is greater in the cities of Minneapolis and 
St. Paul than in any other cities of the United States. According to 
the opinion of a white woman who is the wife of a Negro there are 
about 200 cases of unions between whites and blacks in the two cities. 
The white women of such unions ‘‘are mostly Swedish or German, or 
otherwise foreign-born.” The unhappy outcome of these unions, as 
brought out by the investigation, would lead one to think that they 
would decrease rather than increase.’ 

Taking together the data furnished by Hoffman to 1895, and the 
available evidence since then, I think the conclusion is warranted that 
in this country lawful marriage between whites and blacks is on the de- 
cline. 

The general character of the whites and blacks who have inter- 
married has been low. 

“The few white women,” says Bruce, “who have given birth to mu- 
lattoes have always been regarded as monsters; and without exception 
they belong to the most impoverished and degraded caste of whites, by 
whom they are scrupulously avoided as creatures who have sunk to the 
level of the beasts of the field.” ° 

Hoffman made a study of thirty-seven cases of intermarriage of 
whites and blacks, eight of these cases being marriages of white men 
to Negro women, and twenty-nine cases of white women to Negro men. 

“Of the eight white men, four were lawfully married while the other 
four were living openly in concubinage. Three of the men were crim- 


*Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 200. 

° Hoffman also quotes statistics showing a decline of mixed marriages in the 
West Indies. Op. cit., p. 201. 

"Hoffman, “Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage,” 
Eugenics in Race and State, 1923, Vol. 2, p. 184. 

* The Plantation Negro, p. 53. 


448 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


inals or under suspicion of being such; one man had killed another for 
insulting remarks concerning his negro wife, one killed his mistress in 
a fit of jealousy, one was stabbed and horribly burned by vitriol by his 
colored mistress, one killed his colored mistress by slow poison to ob- 
tain possession of her property, the ill-gotten gains from a house of 
ill-fame. The others were more or less outcasts. One was a saloon- 
keeper, one had deserted his family for his Negro mistress, two were 
men of good family but themselves of bad reputation. 

“Of the twenty-nine women, only nineteen were lawfully married 
to the colored men with whom they were living, while ten lived in open 
concubinage. So far as my information goes only five of the nineteen 
were of foreign birth, one English, one German and three Irish. Of 
the nineteen that were married, four were known prostitutes, two were 
guilty of bigamy, four either sued for divorce or had deserted their 
husbands. Five were apparently of respectable parentage and living 
in content with their husbands; while for four the information is want- 
ing. Of the ten who were not married, eight were known prostitutes, 
one was insane and only one was known to be the daughter of respect- 
able parents. 

“Of the twenty-nine colored men who married or lived with white 
women, only one, an industrious barber, was known to be of good char- 
acter. Five were of fair repute; nine were idlers, loafers or drunkards; 
eleven were of proven criminal and anti-social tendencies; while for 
three the character could not be ascertained. Of the eleven criminals, 
two were murderers, three were thieves, three were guilty of bigamy, 
one was keeper of a house of ill-fame, while the last two were arrested 
for inhuman cruelty to their own or foster children. The result of the 
twenty-nine cases of race mixture prove that of the women, twelve were 
known prostitutes, three were of ill repute, charged in addition with 
cruelty and abuse of children, two were murdered by their colored hus- 
bands, one committed suicide, one became insane, two sued for divorce, 
two deserted their husbands, five were apparently satisfied with their 
_ choice, while for four the information could not be obtained. Thus 
out of twenty-nine instances only five gave any indications of not hav- 
ing been absolute failures, and of the five in only one instance is the 
proof clear that the marriage was a fair success. 

“Comment on these cases is hardly necessary. They tend to prove 
that as a rule neither good white men nor good white women marry 
colored persons, and that good colored men and women do not marry 
white persons. The number of cases is so small, however, that a definite 


EXTENT OF AMALGAMATION 449 


conclusion as to the character of the persons intermarrying is hardly 
warranted. However, it would seem that if such marriages were a 
success, even to a limited extent, some evidence would be found in a 
collection of thirty-seven cases. It is my own opinion, based on per- 
sonal observation in the cities of the South, that the individuals of both 
races who intermarry or live in concubinage are vastly inferior to the 
average types of the white and colored races in the United States; also, 
that the class of white men who have intercourse with colored women 
are, as a rule, of an inferior type.® 

A study of the Negro-white unions in Minneapolis and St. Paul 
shows that the white women entering into such unions are mostly for- 
-eign-born, and with few exceptions “‘social wrecks.” In summing up 
the results of the study, the investigator says: “From personal ob- 
servation there would seem to be not a single case in which the white 
wife of a Negro is truly happy over her marriage. In such cases as 
were investigated there invariably have been unfavorable circumstances 
which forced the white woman or girl to accept the approaches and at- 
tentions of the Negro. Outside of the innocent and ignorant foreign- 
born and country-bred girls, none of these women are to be pitied, 
for, leaving out the exceptions referred to, the majority are social 
degenerates or moral outcasts. There is not a self-respecting white 
woman or girl who would marry a Negro of the class visited or in- 
vestigated. Those who have done so, from whatever cause, are, in 
a certain sense, white slaves, who try to make life happy by self- 
deception.” 7° 

The white wife of a Negro: “finds herself ostracized by both 
white and Negro women.” . . . “She is severed from all intercourse 
with her white neighbors; she does not go out in public with her Negro 
husband ; she would not recommend her sisters or others to marry Negro 
men, obviously on the ground that such mixed marriages bring social 
unhappiness and dissatisfaction.” *” | 

Fortunately the union of whites and blacks results in few offspring. 
The investigation in Minnesota shows that: “The average number of 
children will not exceed two to a family.” ** 


®Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 210. 

” Quoted by Hoffman, “Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Inter- 
marriage,” Eugenics in Race and State, reprint, Vol. 2, p. 186. 

™ Ibid., p. 184. 

“Tbid., p. 185. 

* Tbid., p. 185. 


450 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


The records of charity organizations in large cities show not infre- 
quently that the white women who are married to Negro men are often 
helped. Superintendent Spindler, of the poor department of Milwau- 
kee, stated through the Milwaukee Sentinel “that a large percentage of 
the white women in mixed marriages at one time or other receive aid 
from his office.” 4 

There are several cases of the marriage of reputable white women to 
Negro men. The second wife of Frederick Douglass is an example. 
But it would be difficult to name examples to the number of half a 
dozen. The wife of Jack Johnson, the pugilist, whatever her standing 
before marriage, was led to commit suicide, assigning as her reason 
loneliness and unhappiness. 

In commenting upon the Negro-white marriages in Minnesota, 
Hoffman says: “Race intermixture, on the fringe of social decrepi- 
tude, is not in the slightest degree an indication towards a tendency 
which may possibly lead to race fusion. . . . Intermarriage between 
whites and blacks, just as much as wrongful sexual relations without 
marriage, are essentially anti-social tendencies and therefore opposed to 
the teachings of sound eugenics in the light of the best knowledge avail- 
able to both races at the present time.” *® 

The number of mulattoes in our population may throw some light 
upon the extent of racial intermixture which has been, and is, going on 
outside of marriage. 

There are no statistics as to the number of mulattoes of earlier date 
than 1850. Some idea, however, can be formed of their number in Co- 
lonial times from the census records of Maryland. In 1755 the census 
of that colony showed that eight percent of the Negroes were mulattoes, 
i. e., there were 42,764 colored people, and of these 3,592 were mulat- 
toes. On the assumption that the percentage of mulattoes was the same 
in the other colonies there would have been 27,552 mulattoes in the 
country at that date.’® 

The percentage of our colored people who were mulattoes in 1850 
was 11.2; 1n’ 1860, 13.2; in ‘1870, 12 ;4an “1800, 15,27/10) aGIGN 2am, 
Since I910 our census has not attempted to make a separate count of 
mulattoes. The increase of mulattoes has been general throughout all 
sections of the country, and the ratio of mulattoes to pure Negroes has 


**\Mar.)12, 1003: 

*“Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage,” Eugenics in 
Race and State, reprint, Vol. 2, p. 188. 

* Reuter, The Mulatto in tie United States, p. 112. 


EXTENT OF AMALGAMATION 4si 


also everywhere increased except in the Mountain, Pacific, and East 
North Central divisions.** 

The mulatto increase has been due mainly to the intermarriage of 
Negroes and mulattoes, and not to the intermarriage or miscegnation 
of Negroes and whites. 

The percentage of the mulattoes in the colored population of our 
country has always been greater in the Northern sections.'® 

According to the census of 1910 the percentage for each section was 
as follows: 


New torlandivan. a, caresete yrs 33.4 
ITCCHeRT AA TIAIICICH tare citere eet tar 19.6 
Bast® North’ Gentral 2a, Fon 3332 
West, North: Centraliny.). pane: 28.7 
OULU At LICE ie atte the ane Pet 20.8 
Paste OOUTi uC entralmr te tele cera. 19.1 
MeSUROUULCO MUCH alt irom aie 20.1 
VLOUNCAIN ie seve ments A yemetarnes ors s 28.6 
Da ciic ee oh ats eeu YR OT i 20.9 


“The distribution of the mulatto population at all times,” says Reu- 
ter, “for which the facts are known, has been in general accord with the 
ratio of the races. Where the proportion of whites in the population 
is highest, the mulatto population as a rule is highest; and where the 
proportion of Negroes in the population is highest, there, as a rule, the 
percentage of mulattoes is lowest.” *® 

The greater percentage of mulattoes in the Northern sections has 
been due probably to two facts: First, the colored population in the 
North has always been more concentrated in cities, where Negro women 
come into contact most frequently with dissolute white men. “It is 
there, too, that the opportunity to conceal the relationship makes the 
control of the situation by the prevailing sentiment less effective than 
in the rural situation.” ?° 

Second, the migration of colored people has been mostly from the 
South to the North, and the mulattoes, more largely than the Negroes, 
have formed this migration. 

It is evident that the mulatto increase in the United States has been 
due mainly to the intermixture of Negroes and mulattoes, and not to 


™ Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States, p. 119. 
1 bid.,*D.. 120. 
tiie Deal 22. 
” Tbid., p. 164, 


452 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


the intermixture of Negroes and whites, that the intermixture of whites 
and blacks was at its maximum in early Colonial times and has been 
diminishing every year since. 

The concensus of opinion of competent observers supports the view 
that sexual intercourse between whites and blacks is everywhere rapidly 
diminishing. 

Bruce, referring to Virginia, expresses the opinion: “that illicit 
sexual intercourse between the races has diminished so far as to have 
almost ceased outside of the cities and towns, where the association, 
being more casual, is more frequent.” 7? 

A. H. Stone, a planter of Mississippi, and the author of Studies in 
the American Race Problem, says: “There was a vast amount of this 
amalgamation up to perhaps twenty years ago. Since then there has 
been a decided change of sentiment on the part of southern white men. 
I know that not long ago it was not an uncommon thing to find an over- 
seer or superintendent on the plantation who would have from one to 
half a dozen concubines. This practice has practically been done away 
with. The planters will not permit their overseers to do such things, 
and the overseers themselves will not offend in this regard, although 
they are placed in an extraordinary position, frequently being the only 
white person in a great multitude of colored people.” 

The testimony of Southern men on this subject is confirmed by the 
opinions of outsiders who have had opportunity to acquaint themselves 
with the facts. For example, James Bryce, referring to the Negro in 
the United States, says: “There is practically no admixture; and so 
far as can be foreseen they will remain, at least in the sub-tropical part 
of the South, distinctly African in their physical and mental character- 
istics for centuries to come. The same remark holds true of the white 
and black races of South Africa, where the processes of blood mix- 
ture, which went on to some extent between the Dutch and the Hotten- 
tots, has all but stopped.” 

Raymond Patterson, a Northern man, and author of The Negro and 
His Needs, remarks that he found the opinion prevailing “over all the 
south, that the amalgamation of the black and the white races is rapidly 
disappearing.” 2° 

* The Plantation Negro as a Freeman, p. 53. 
**“Assimilation of Races in the United States,” printed in the Smithsonian 


report, 1893, p. 587. 
pie dai to 


CHAPTER 58 
OPPOSITION TO AMALGAMATION 


Sentiment of the Whites and Negroes against Amalgamation—Representative 
Opinions of Men of Both Races—Unity of Spokesmen for the Negroes of the 
South against Amalgamation—The Futility of Advocating Amalgamation 
as a Solution of the Race Problem 


UTTING aside all scientific or theoretical considerations, the over- 

whelming sentiment of both the Negroes and Caucasians against 

amalgamation ought to be convincing proof of the futility of holding 
out racial intermixture as a possible solution of the race problem. 

Wherever in the United States, or elsewhere, the Negroes constitute 
a considerable mass of the population they naturally segregate, and find 
a satisfying social life among members of their own race, and conse- 
quently have no desire to intermarry with the whites. In the Southern 
United States, for instance, the Negroes have a highly developed social 
life among themselves, and they not only prefer intermarriage with 
their kind, but cannot understand why any one should even discuss the 
subject of amalgamation. If they were left alone, the idea of inter- 
marrying with the whites would never enter their minds. 

The only champions of amalgamation among the Negroes are found 
in the Northern states among the mulatto class who do not want to be 
mixed with or be classed with the blacks, and who have an inadequate 
social life among themselves. 

Among the white people in the United States there has never been 
any advocacy of amalgamation except among the few fanatics who 
flourished during the period of anti-slavery agitation preceding the 
Civil War. The white race, especially the Nordic branch of it, has 
always been outspoken against any intermarriage with the Negro. As 
illustrating the strength of Caucasian sentiment against such mixture, 
I quote from the writings of several representatives of the race as 
follows: 

Dr. James Hunt, F. R. S., president of the London Anthropo- 
logical Society in 1864, made the following statement: “It has been a 

453 


454 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

favorite theory with some visionary philanthropists that intermarriages 
of different species would be highly favorable to the race, but we have 
never heard of any of them who were willing to commence the prac- 
tice in their own families. There is certainly no method that could 
possibly be devised, which would certainly and as expeditiously de- 
grade the whole human family as amalgamation.” * 

Henry Ward Beecher, in a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal, 
March 3, 1865, wrote: “I do not think it wise that whites and blacks 
should mix blood . . . it is to be discouraged on grounds of humanity.” ? 

Senator John J. Ingalls said, in reply to Fred Douglass’ assertion 
that the races would coalesce: “I do not agree with him. There is 
no affinity between the races; this solution is impossible. . . . There 
is no blood-poison so fatal as the adulteration of race.” ® 

D. H. Chamberlain, the Reconstruction governor of South Carolina, 
in a letter to the Rt. Hon. James Bryce, remarked: “I find myself 
forced by my experience and observation to say that perhaps our first 
practical aim should be to undo, as fast as possible, what we have 
heretofore done for the Negro since his emancipation; namely, the 
inspiring in him the hope or dream of sharing with the white race 
here a social or political equality; for whoever will lay aside wishes 
and fancies and look only at realities will see that these things are 
impossibilities within any measurable reach of time, if ever. I assume 
as a certainty that what you call ‘the blending of races,’ by inter- 
marriage, cannot take place between the Negro and the white race 
of this country. I go farther and say that such intermixture is as 
undesirable as it is impossible. It would be the degradation of the 
white race, but not the elevation of the Negro race.” 

James Bryce, himself, speaks of amalgamation as follows: “Where 
two races are physiologically near to one another, the result of inter- 
mixture is good. Where they are remote, it is less satisfying, by 
which I mean not only that it is below the level of the higher stock, 
but that it is not generally and evidently better than the lower stock. 
The mixture of whites and Negroes, or of whites and Hindus, seldom 
shows good results. . . 

“Should this view be correct, it dissuades any attempt to mix races 
so diverse as are the white Europeans and the Negroes... . 

“The matter ought to be regarded from the side of neither the 

*The Negro’s Place in Nature, p. 20. 


* Quoted by Avary, Dixie After the War, p. 395. 
* Quoted ibid., p. 396. 


OPPOSITION TO AMALGAMATION 445 


white nor of the black, but for the future of mankind at large. Now, 
for the future of mankind, nothing is so vital as that some races 
should be maintained at the highest level of efficiency, because the 
work they can do for thought and art, and literature, for scientific 
discoveries, and for raising the standard of conduct, will determine 
the general progress of humanity. If therefore we were to suppose 
the blood of the races which are now most advanced to be diluted, 
so to speak, by the most backward, not only would more be lost to 
the former than would be gained to the latter, but there would be 
loss, possibly irreparable loss, to the world at large.” 4 

W. P. Livingstone, an English authority, long familiar with the 
Negro in Jamaica, in his book, The Race Conflict, says of amalgama- 
tion: “The only effect which the subject has on the whites is to rouse 
their fiercest passions, and to make the proposal seriously would be 
to doom the Negro to destruction. Those who discuss it cannot know 
what they are talking about.” 

William Archer, an Englishman, who has studied the race prob- 
lem in the United States, states his views in the following language: 
“The South, then, is urged by amalgamation theorists to embark 
upon, or submit to, what is at least a great experiment. It is to quell 
its highest instincts (for so it regards them, rightly or wrongly) and 
to commit what it feels in the marrow of its bones to be a degrading 
race-abnegation, in deference to a half-scientific, half-humanitarian 
opinion, held by certain theorists outside its own boundaries, to the 
effect that, after all, there is no great difference between black and 
white, and that the complexion of the future will certainly be a 
uniform yellow. Can any one blame the South for answering: ‘No, 
thank you! If you in England or New England are tired of being 
white men, and sigh for the blessing of an African blend, we can 
send you several million Negroes, of both sexes, who will no doubt 
be happy, on suitable terms, to intermarry with your sons and daugh- 
ters. For our part, we are content with our complexion as it is. 
We see no reason to believe that the African slave trade was the 
means adopted by a beneficient Providence for the ultimate improve- 
ment of our Anglo-Saxon stock; nor, on the other hand, can we ex- 
pect it as a just punishment for the sins of our fathers that our race, 
as a race, should be merged and obliterated in indiscriminate hybrid- 
Sta 

* Relation of Advanced and Backward Races of Mankind, pp. 24, 39. 

Through Afro-America, p. 221. 


450 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“T do not understand how any white man who has ever visited the 
South can fail to be dismayed at the thought of absorbing into the 
veins of his race the blood of the African myriads who swarm on 
every hand.” ® 

Archer does not think that the people of England would be any 
more inclined to amalgamate with the Negro than the people of the 
Southern States. “England, for instance, would certainly not be a 
more desirable place of residence if one-fourth of her population 
were transmuted into the semblance of the Dahomeyans, even suppos- 
ing that the metamorphosis involved no moral or intellectual change 
for the worse. A monochrome civilization is, on the face of it, pref- 
erable to such a piebald civilization as at present exists in the Southern 
States.” 7 

Coleridge, in commenting upon the marriage of Desdemona and 
Othello, says: “It would be something monstrous to conceive of this 
beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable Negro.” 

Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard University, gives 
his views in these words: ‘Northern and southern opinion are identical 
with regard to keeping the races pure—that is, without admixture of 
the one with the other, (and) ... inasmuch as the Negroes hold 
the same view, this supposed danger of mutual racial impairment ought 
not to have much influence on practical measures. Admixture of 
the two races, as far as it proceeds, will be, as it has been, chiefly 
the result of sexual vice on the part of the white men; it will not be 
a wide-spread evil, and it will not be advocated as a policy or method 
by anybody worthy of consideration.” ® 

The attitude of the Caucasion toward intermixture with the Negro 
has not changed within the historic period. As far back as 700 B. C. 
the fair widowed Queen Dido of Carthage committed suicide rather 
than comply with the unnatural and selfish importunities of her sub- 
jects, to marry Tarbus, the swarthy monarch of Mauritania in Africa. 

About the shallowest type of agitator of our time is the man 
who has an obsession or mental complex for uniformity. Among the 
human races, as among animals in general, the pairing of the sexes 
is governed by consciousness of kind which insures the blending of 
nearly related types only. The facts of history, as well as those of 
anthropology, make it perfectly plain that from the dawn of man to 

° Through Afro-America, p. 232. 

AT bidees pe vac 

* Quoted by Avary, Dirie After the War, p. 306. 


OPPOSITION TO AMALGAMATION 457 


the present, instead of a tendency toward uniformity of type, there 
has been a tendency in the opposite direction. 

“Nature,” says Ruskin, “abhors equality and similitude just as much 
as foolish men love them.” 

The beauty of a painting lies not in uniformity or clash of color but 
in variety and harmony of color. 

Why any sane person should wish for a time when the races of the 
world would lose all identity and become a single chromatic type passes 
all understanding, for it is only by each race’s retaining its individuality 
and flowering in its particular habitat that the culture of the world can 
receive its greatest variety and richness of content. 


CHAPTER 59 
COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 


Efforts to Colonize the Negro in Africa—Lincoln’s Plan of Colonizing the Negro 
in the West Indies—Archer’s Idea of Colonizing the Negro in Lower Cali- 
fornia—Views of Henry M. Stanley and Others on Colonization—The Marcus 
Garvey Scheme—Question of the Negro’s Aptitude for Colonization 


HE earliest proposed solution of the Negro problem in America 

was that of colonization. This seems to have been first suggested 
by Rev. Samuel Hopkins and Rev. Ezra Stiles, of Newport, Rhode 
Island, where the African slave trade had been extensively carried 
on. In a circular letter issued by them in 1773, they invited sub- 
scriptions to a fund for establishing a colony of free Negroes on 
the West Coast of Africa. Contributions were made by some ladies 
of Newport, and by citizens of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 

In 1777 Thomas Jefferson proposed a colonization scheme to the 
General Assembly of Virginia, but no action on his proposal was taken. 
In 1793 he advocated a plan of colonization to be carried on by 
the several states and by the national government, and he continued to 
urge this idea up to his death in 1826. 

In 1787 the British government established a colony on the 
African coast at Sierra Leone, as a home for destitute Africans from 
different parts of the world, and as a means of spreading civilization 
among the natives. After the American Revolution, Dr. Hopkins 
endeavored, without success, to make arrangements by which free 
blacks from America might join this colony at Sierra Leone. 

In 1815 a Negro by the name of Paul Cuffee, of Boston, who had 
made a fortune as a sailor and trader, becoming enthusiastic over the 
colonization idea, inaugurated the first emigration of Negroes from 
this country to Africa. Fle carried in his own ship, and at his own 
expense, nine families of Negroes, a total of thirty-eight persons, 
from New Bedford, and landed them at Sierra Leone.? 

A systematic and extensive colonization project began to take form 
in December, 1816, when a group of prominent citizens from various 


* Colonization Reports, Vol. 1, p. 123. 
458 


COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 459 


states met in Washington, and effected a tentative organization which 
culminated in the American Colonization Society. The idea of coloniz- 
ing the Negroes in Africa or elsewhere met with the hearty endorse- 
ment of many of our leading statesmen. Jefferson in 1820 wrote: 
“Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these 
people are to be free: nor is it less certain than that the two races, 
equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, 
opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.” * 

A few years later, writing to Jared Sparks in regard to the Negro, 
he said that he deemed it in the interest of our safety and happiness 
“to provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole 
of that population from among us, and establish them under our 
patronage and protection as a separate, free, and independent people, 
i some country and climate friendly to human life and happiness.” ° 

Henry Clay, in an address in 1829 said: “If we were to invoke the 
greatest blessing on the earth, which Heaven, in its mercy, could be- 
stow on the nation, it would be the separation of the two most numerous 
races of its population, and their comfortable establishment in dis- 
tinct and different countries.’ 4 

Daniel Webster once remarked that: “If any gentleman from the 
South shall propose a scheme to be carried on by this government 
upon a large scale, in the transportation of the colored people to any 
country or any place in the world, I shall be quite disposed to incur 
almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object.” 5 

Up to 1875 the American Colonization Society had raised about 
$2,800,000, and had sent to its colony in Liberia about 15,000 Negroes, 
to which were added 5,722, captured in the slave trade and sent there 
by the United States government. The emigration of Negroes to 
Africa, however, was only a small percentage of the increase in num- 
bers, and, as a solution of the Negro problem, it seemed to be im- 
practicable. The interest in the society was kept up only by a few 
friends of the Negro who hoped that the colony already planted in 
Liberia might become a missionary center for the dissemination of 
civilization among the African natives. 

But the idea of colonizing the Negro continued to live and find 
champions; and Africa was not the only country thought of as an 


? Raynor, Jefferson Manuscripts, p. 64. 

® Ford, Writings of Jefferson, Vol. 10, p. 290. 

*The African Repository and Colonial Journal, Vol. 2, p. 23. 

* Quoted by Patton, The History of the American People, p. 135. 


460 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


objective for deportation. Benjamin Lundy favored colonization of 
the Negro in Haiti and Canada. In 1833 a convention of Negroes 
in Philadelphia declared in favor of colonizing their race in Texas.® 

From time to time up to the Civil War sundry slaveholders in 
Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas emancipated their slaves, some- 
times in batches of fifty to 100 and more, and settled them on cer- 
tain lands in Ohio and Indiana. 

After about 1833, the people of the United States became agitated 
over the question of the abolition of slavery and therefore inter- 
est in colonization was almost extinguished. Abraham Lincoln, how- 
ever, was one of the few friends of the Negro who continued to put 
faith in the colonization idea. 

Speaking on the subject of colonization in 1857, he said: “Let 
us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time favor- 
able to, or, at least, not against our interests, to transfer the African 
to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great 
the task may be.’ * 

In his first annual message to Congress, December, 1861, Lincoln 
advocated the colonization of the thousands of Negroes who had come 
into custody of the Federal government through the operations of 
war.® Congress accordingly passed an act appropriating $600,000 to be 
used by him in carrying out his plan. In furtherance of the act, 
Lincoln invited a delegation of prominent colored men to meet him 
at the White House on August 14, 1862; and at this meeting he said: 
“And why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? 
Why should you leave this country? This is perhaps the first ques- 
tion for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We 
have between us broader differences than exist between almost any 
other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; 
but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both as I 
think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among 
us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on 
account of each sidé. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least, 
why we should be separated... . 

“Sir, our present condition—the country engaged in war—our white 
men cutting one another’s throats—none knowing how far it will 
extend—and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for 


°The African Repository and Colonial Journal, June, 1832, p. 86. 
"Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1, p. 235. 
* Messages and Papers of the President, Vol, 6, p. 54. 


COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 401 


your race among us there could not be war, although many men en- 
gaged on either side do not care for you one way or another. Never- 
theless, I repeat, without the institution of slavery, and the colored 
race, as a basis, the war could not have an existence. It is better 
for us both, therefore, to be separated. 

“The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when 
free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is 
made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated 
the best, and the ban is still upon you. I do not propose to dis- 
cuss this, but to present it as a fact with which we have to deal. I 
cannot alter it if I would.... 

“T ask you then to consider seriously, not pertaining to yourselves 
merely, not for your race and ours for the present time, but as one 
of the things, if successfully managed, for the good of mankind—not 
confined to the present generation.” ® 

The money appropriated by Congress for carrying out Lincoln’s 
plan was used mostly in fruitless efforts to settle Negroes in New 
Granada, and on La Vache island, off the coast of Haiti. 

Since the Civil War there has been no organized effort to send the 
Negroes out of our country, but the colonization idea has persisted in 
the minds of numerous students of our Negro problem. 

William D. Simpson, a lawyer of Yorkville, S. C., in testifying be- 
fore the sub-committee which was investigating the Ku Klux in ’7r 
said: “I do honestly believe the solution of this difficulty is the separa- 
tion of the two races. ... Either the one or the other ought to be 
colonized. I tell you, as a citizen of South Carolina, I would rather 
be moved to-day by the General Government beyond the Mississippi, 
if they would pay me for my house, make a new State, and let the 
Negro take this, or move the Negro—one or the other. I think it is 
a fallacy, this effort to carry on government by these two races so 
widely distinct. It is a fallacy, and the sooner the American people 
find it out the better.” 1° 

Henry M. Stanley, the great African explorer, was favorable to 
the idea of colonizing the American Negroes in Africa, “There is 
space enough in one section of the Upper Congo basin,’ he said, “to 
locate double the number of the Negroes of the United States with- 
out disturbing a single tribe of the aborigines now inhabiting it. I 


°Raymond, The Life, Public Services, and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln, 


Pp. 504. 
“Ku Klux Reports, Vol. 5, p. 1316, 


462 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





refer to the immense Upper Congo forest country, 350,000 square 
miles in extent, which is three times larger than the Argentine Re- 
public, and one and a half times larger than the entire German Empire, 
embracing 224,000,000 acres of umbrageous forest land, wherein every 
unit of the 7,000,000 Negroes might become the owner of nearly a 
quarter square mile of land. Five acres of this, planted with bananas 
and plantains would furnish sufficient subsistence—food and wine. The 
remaining twenty-seven acres of his estate would furnish him with tim- 
ber, rubber, gums, dye-stuffs, for sale... . The climate is healthy 
and equable, owing to the impervious forest which protects the land 
from chilly winds and draughts. . . . To those Negroes in the South 
accustomed to Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, it would be a 
reminder of their own plantations without the swamps and the de- 
pressing influence of cypress forests. Anything and everything might 
be grown in it, from the oranges, guavas, sugar-cane, and cotton of 
sub-tropical lands to the wheat of California and the rice of South 
Carolina. If the emigration were prudently conceived and carried 
out, the glowing accounts sent home by the first settlers would soon 
dissipate all fear and reluctance on the part of the others. But it is 
all a dream. The American capitalists, like other leaders of men, are 
more engaged in decorating their wives with diamonds than in busy- 
ing themselves with national questions of such import as removing 
the barrier between the North and the South. The open sore of 
America—the race question—will ever remain an incurable fester. 
While we are all convinced that the Nessus shirt which clings to the 
Republic has maddened her, and may madden her again, it is quite 
certain that the small effort needed to free themselves for ever from it 
will never be made.” ™ 

Dr. Edward W. Blyden, Negro of Jamaica, and author of Chris- 
tianity, Islam and the Negro, believed that there was no hope for 
his race in America, and he favored their migration back to Africa. 
Dr. R. W. Schufeldt, of the Medical Corps of the United States Army, 
in his book, America’s Greatest Problem, also favored colonizing the 
Negro in Africa. Carl McKinley, of Charleston, South Carolina, in 
his dn Appeal to Pharaoh, also advocated the colonizing of the Negro 
in Africa. 

Clinton S. Burr, in his book, America’s Race Heritage, says: “How- 
ever, it was the general view of the American public, during the period 
leading up to the World War, that it would be entirely impossible 

* Quoted by Clowes, Black America, p. 212. 


COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 463 


to transport so large a multitude of our Negroes to Africa, albeit over 
a long term of years. At that time the world did not know that 
over two million American soldiers would some day be conveyed across 
the ocean to France, through the submarine blockade and the mine 
fields in the short space of twelve months; and that they would be 
set down in a land ‘milked dry,’ so that of necessity they would be 
forced to take most necessities with them. The world did not know 
that it would be startled by the virtual cities, railroads, forts and 
institutions that would spring up in France. But we know this today: 
and we know, too, that if our idealism is great enough, we can 
transport millions of blacks abroad, colonize them in self-supporting 
communities under United States jurisdiction, and have wealth and 
resources to spare. As a matter of fact, we could make such a 
scheme self-supporting by utilizing the labor of the Negroes to im- 
prove regions with vast resources still untouched. The scheme is not 
visionary if the nation is big enough to carry through a settled policy 
which might be fulfilled only after many years of self-abnegation, 
but whose final results would be as great a benefit to future generations 
as reforestation or any system of conservation of our national 
resources. 

“The former German possessions in Africa, including healthful 
upland regions, might be acquired by the United States, the purchase 
price being offset in part by the war debt of Europe. Then, again, 
arrangements might be made with Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, or the 
European governments of Guianas, to transfer part of the American 
Negroes to these countries, with the proviso that the United States 
capitalists supply the necessary funds to develop the countries in 
question. . 

“Lastly, in this connection, we might adapt, to the peculiar ex- 
igencies of the Negro problem in the United States, the plan pro- 
posed by General Botha in South Africa; that is, to relegate the 
Negro population, or at least a portion of it, to certain reservations. 
In such districts, set aside for their welfare, the Negroes might be 
able to work out their destiny with financial and technical assistance, 
to begin with. At least the attempt could be made on a small scale 
to determine the extent of the Negro’s ability to progress when pro- 
tected from the competition of the whites.” 1? 

John Temple Graves has suggested the colonization of the Negro 
in the Philippine Islands. 

* Burr, America’s Race Heritage, p. 157. 


464 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


William Archer, the most recent writer on the subject, tells us 
that the proper place to colonize the Negro is in Lower California, 
or in some other undeveloped region of the West. 

“It would be absurd for me,” he says, “to forecast in any detail 
the methods by which the concentration should be brought about. 
They must be devised and elaborated by the great American states- 
man who is to come. If he can successfully grapple with this colossal 
task, he will deserve to rank with Washington and Lincoln in the 
affections of his countrymen. It might be safely predicted that he 
will attempt no sudden and forcible displacement of the mass of the 
negro race. Rather he will establish local conditions that shall tempt 
the younger and more enterprising negroes to migrate of their own 
free will; while he will probably fix by legislation a pretty distant 
date—say five and twenty years—after which it shall be competent 
for the various State governments forcibly to evict (by compensa- 
tion) and transplant to the new State any negroes under, say, forty- 
five years of age still lingering within their boundaries. There will 
be no need at any time to disturb old or middle-aged negroes who 
are disinclined to start life afresh under new conditions."* .. . 

“It might be necessary at first to establish some provisional gov- 
ernment, like that of an American territory or English crown colony; 
but as soon as the country was sufficiently settled, and the mechanism 
of life in full swing, there could be no difficulty or danger in admitting 
the new community into the union, with full State rights. Negro 
education has enormously progressed since the bad old days of Recon- 
struction; and there is no reason to doubt that the population could 
furnish a competent legislature, executive and judiciary. Legislative 
aberrations would be checked by the Supreme Court of the United 
States; and if things went thoroughly wrong, and a new Haiti 
threatened to develop in the heart of the Republic, why, United States 
troops would always be at hand to hold a black mob or black adven- 
turer in awe. But it would doubtless be a fundamental principle 
that no white man could vote or hold office in the negro State, while, 
reciprocally, no colored man could vote or hold office in a white state. 
The abrogation of the Fifteenth Amendment would remove from the 
Constitution of the United States a constant source of trouble.*. . . 

“The idea that all the world ought to belong equally to all men, 
and that rational development tends towards an unrestricted inter- 


* Archer, Through Afro-America, p. 239. 
“1btd., p. 2A1. 


COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 465 


mingling of races, seems to be signally contradicted by the trend of 
events. Is it not a great essential for the ultimate world peace that 
races should learn to keep themselves to themselves?” 1° 

In recent years there has developed among the Negroes in the 
United States a movement to reclaim Africa for their race; and, while 
it does not contemplate the immediate migration of American Negroes 
to Africa, its program would seem to pave the way ultimately for 
such a movement. The originator and leader of this movement is 
Marcus Garvey, a Negro from Jamaica, now of world fame, and 
known as the “Negro Moses.” He is at the head of an organization 
entitled “The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African 
Community League.” His idea is to set forces at work in Africa 
that will give rise to an African Empire, using the Republic of Liberia 
as a nucleus. ‘With my organization,’ he says, “we hope to place 
in Liberia skilled artisans and scientists, men who can determine the 
possibilities in the soil, the mineral wealth, the raw materials to be 
reached, and then, we think, when we have acquired all of the ex- 
pert information, necessary to intelligently proceed, we ought to go 
about the raising of the finance with which Liberia can underwrite 
her economic problems. In this way we can assist in the growth of a 
dream that may not come in my day. Liberia will be able to develop 
to a high state in every way. If sixty million Japs have been able 
to establish a government in sixty years so powerful as to make every 
nation fear it, surely four hundred millions of black people ought to 
be able to accomplish the same thing in ten years.” *° 

Garvey’s organization has branches in all of the states, and he 
employs some goo or 1,000 Negro orators to stump the country in 
the interest of his project. However, he himself is the principal 
spokesman for his cause. He is a man of very striking personality, 
possessing a very black skin, pugnacious face, and eloquent tongue, 
and he lectures to immense throngs of his race in all sections of the 
United States. He is often introduced to audiences as ‘President 
General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Pro- 
visional President of Africa.’ With the funds collected he has already 
begun operations on the African continent. Early in 1921, fifteen 
pioneers sailed for Liberia in ships owned by the U. N. I. A., carry- 
ing on board surveyors, architects, carpenters, chemists, physicians, 
etc., to begin the work of rehabilitating the “dark continent.” 

* Tbid., p. 241. 

** Report in the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch, May 25, 1922. 


466 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


The Garvey movement is regarded generally, especially by the 
whites, as a mere chase after the rainbow, but I consider it a matter 
of serious import, in every respect creditable to its leader, and to 
all who are backing it. Garvey’s dream will never be realized, but 
his effort may result in providing a refuge for his people when they 
come to feel the struggle for existence here too unequal, and too cruel. 

But has the Negro any aptitude for empire building or coloniza- 
tion? A very striking argument against the practicability of any 
scheme of colonization by the Negroes themselves is presented by 
the Negro author, Thomas, in his book The Amertcan Negro. He 
says that the Negro is: “‘wanting in the migratory instincts of other 
races, for, despite occasional roamings, he is content only in aggre- 
gated racial habitations of fixed locality and defined bounds. It is 
this characteristic which interposes a fundamental barrier to any 
scheme for African colonization, and to it is due the neglect of the 
negroes after their emancipation to settle on the public lands of the 
general government, of which, in the South alone, there were millions 
of acres open to public entry under the homestead laws of the United 
States. 

“The negro, however, is not without some experience in coloniza- 
tion in the Western world. We do not allude to fugitive slave settle- 
ments in Canada, for that form of migration was mainly individual, 
and in no instance rose to the dignity and importance of concerted 
community settlements, carried on under organized methods. He has, 
however, made several abortive attempts at colonial migration. He 
has gone to Mexico under the most illusive promises, only to meet 
disappointment and beggary. He has emigrated to the West, empty- 
handed and ignorant of the conditions of life which obtain there, 
only to find himself stranded and drifting back to his former abode. 
In each instance he failed to better his condition, because common- 
sense methods were left out of his reckoning. To both localities he 
went, not as a land-seeker and home-builder, or to become a creative 
factor in a permanent community, but as a crude laborer to a market 
already overcrowded with untrained forces. His migration was made 
impulsively and ignorantly, without one sane element entering into his 
calculations. That he should fail, was, from every rational stand- 
point, a foregone conclusion. 

“Perhaps his most notable attempt at colonial settlement was that 
of the Haitian migration scheme which had its rise during the closing 
years of the fifties. This was a movement which duped thousands 


COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 467 
of negroes North and South with delusive tales of wealth and free- 
dom, and led them to cast their lot with a people with whom they had 
no affinity, and from whom they could receive no succor when sub- 
sequent poverty and illness had reduced them to dire distress. Most 
of the negroes who went to Haiti afterward found their way back 
to the United States; and it is the trustworthy opinion that ninety 
per cent of all the negroes who leave the United States for Liberia 
would return could they find the means to do so. 

“We contend that the negro has not the capacity for any exten- 
sive scheme of migration. If he had, abundant opportunities involv- 
ing little risk lie all about him. For instance, what better opening 
could be conceived than for a few like-minded and well-equipped 
freedmen to get together and lease land in some suitable Southern 
section, and build up a community after their liking? If there really 
exists any deep-seated desire among these people for self-govern- 
ment, such a settlement ought to be reckoned by hundreds and even 
thousands of families. An experiment of this sort, if successful, 
would naturally fit them for exercising greater civil responsibilities, 
besides exerting a profound influence on the political condition of 
freedmen elsewhere. In the end it might open the way for a wide- 
spread recognition of a desire to better themselves.” 17 

William McDougall, professor of psychology in Harvard Univer- 
sity, in his book, Is America Safe for Democracy, contrasts the Nordic 
and Mediterranean races in their aptitude for colonization, and he 
argues that a race which has a strong gregarious instinct, like the 
Mediterranean race, does not make successful colonizers; that only 
a race having pronounced self-reliance and an aptitude for isolation, 
like the Nordic race, ever succeeds in opening up and settling a 
new country. If the Mediterranean race is disqualified for coloniza- 
tion by reason of its gregarious tendencies, the Negro race should 
be still less qualified, since it is the most gregarious of all the races of 
the world. 

The most recent advocate of colonization is Ernest S. Cox, who, 
in his book, White America, published in 1925, makes a plea for the 
compulsory transportation of the Negro to Liberia or some other part 
of his homeland. He says: “We must settle the negro problem once 
for all, and to do this we have no recourse other than to return the 
negro to his homeland... . 

“If the negro is timid and does not wish to go when the ways 

™ Thomas, The American Negro, pp. 355-7. 


468 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


of his going and the means of his living there are provided for him, 
then he is to be made to go. 

“The question of the repatriation of the negro should not be left 
to the negro’s decision, any more than the question of the removal of 
the Indian was left to the choice of the Indian. Some of the Indian 
tribes wished to remain east of the Mississippi River; others wished to 
go to the lands allotted to them if they were assured of a stable gov- 
ernment in their new homes. The Indian was in the way of the ad- 
vancement of civilization; those who did not wish to move were made 
to move. Their consolidation was primarily for the purpose of leav- 
ing the Caucasian unhindered in his progress. Can anyone believe 
that American civilization was endangered by the Indian as it is by 
the negro? But the Indian was not segregated until the Federal Gov- 
ernment undertook the measure with force and decision. Nor will 
the negro be repatriated until the Federal Government turns itself 
seriously to the task. 

“Repatriation will ih our negro problem aie and will give 
the negro a future... . 

“We would not return our negroes en masse, but only those of 
breeding age, and be as much as a generation in placing them in their 
new homes, making it possible by this slow process to fill up their gap 
in the United States and to provide them with the certainties of sub- 
sistence in Liberia. 

“Again, there is no necessity for confining our negroes to the pres- 
ent limits of Liberia. We should widen, by purchase, that country’s 
borders. If not this, we should acquire the Belgian Congo, which is 
the richest and most inviting portion of the world yet awaiting the 
light of civilization. If not the Belgian Congo—then Portuguese West 
Africa; or part of the French possessions; or German Togoland, or 
the Kamerun. These latter having passed from German hands as a 
result of the recent war, there is an added hope of their acquisition. 
We may rest well assured that England, with her present understand- 
ing of the negro problem, her need of civilized labor in her vast 
African possession, and, not least, her consciousness that she played 
the dominant role in fastening the negro and negro slavery upon her 
former American possessions, will do anything in her power to aid 
in returning them to Africa. With her sympathetic and practical aid 
there is not need to look further.” 1% 

Up to the present time all of the efforts at Negro colonization have 

* Cox, White America, pp. 335-44. 


COLONIZATION AS A SOLUTION 469 





been signal failures, and I see no ground for hoping that Cox’s scheme 
or any other will ever succeed. I think the time is coming, however, 
when our country, like the old countries of Europe, will have an over- 
flowing population, causing the Negro to feel more sharply than now 
the pressure of competition with the whites and then, not unlikely, 
the states having a large Negro population may offer transportation to 
Negro citizens who may wish to migrate to some other country. 


CHAPTER 60 
RACEMSEGREGA PION SAS tA SL UL 


Natural Tendency of Races to Keep Apart—Negro Segregation in America— 
Opposition of the Negroes to Enforced Segregation—Advantages and Dis- 
advantages of Segregation—Views of James Bryce on the Subject 


N discussing the question of Negro and Caucasian segregation in 

the United States, we would do well to recall the fact that there 
is a general tendency among the races of the world to segregate; 
and that this is especially true of races which differ in color. The 
black, brown, yellow, and white races have gradually and spontane- 
ously segregated themselves, and now occupy well defined geographical 
areas, except where conquest has disturbed the isolating process. 

B. L. Putnam Weale, in his book, The Conflict of Color, argues 
that racial ties are much stronger than national ones, and that the 
future boundary lines of nations must conform to those of the races. 
According to his classification, there are four great races of the world: 
the white, the black, the yellow, and the brown. Each of these races, 
he tells us, has its natural habitat to which it is adapted; and each 
would resist the encroachment of any other race. He regards as 
especially dangerous to the future of the white race a continuance 
of its aggressions upon the territory of other races. The black, yellow, 
and brown races vastly outnumber the whites, and the time is not 
distant when they may be expected to acquire a military efficiency 
equal to that of the whites, and when they may probably make formid- 
able alliances, and turn against their former white tutors. It be- 
hooves the white race, therefore, as speedily as possible to withdraw 
from the territory of other races. 

Since the World War the idea of racial segregation, advanced by 
Weale, seems to have seized the minds of the foremost statesmen of 
every great nation, and has found expression in the League of Nations, 
whose chief aim, it seems, is to bring about world peace by conforming 
political boundaries to those of the race. 

This trend toward the international segregation of the races of 
the world should suggest to the people of the United States that we 

470 


RACE SEGREGATION AS A SOLUTION 471 


lend a helping hand to the black, yellow, and brown races, but keep 
our hands off of their territory, and preserve our territory for our own 
race. 

“Every consideration,” says Conklin, “should lead those who be- 
lieve in the superiority of the white race to strive to preserve its 
purity and to establish and maintain the segregation of the races, for 
the longer this is maintained the greater the preponderance of the 
white race will be.” ? 

Wherever races differing widely in physical characteristics come 
together in the same territory, through conquest or immigration, the 
tendency is for each race to form segregated groups; i. e., they occupy 
different areas or stratify into castes and classes. Instances of terri- 
torial segregation of races in the same country are the Japanese and 
Ainu of Japan, the Malays and Negritos of the Philippine Islands, 
the Europeans and the aborigines of South Africa, the Yankees and 
Sandwich Islanders in Hawaii, and the Americans and Amerindians 
of Porto Rico. The most striking instance of race stratification is in 
India. 

From the beginning of Negro slavery in America, it has been the 
natural tendency of the whites and blacks to live apart, except in so 
far as the economic conditions necessitated contact. Neither the whites 
nor the blacks have had any idea of intermingling their blood, and 
down to the present time both races have been in favor of social 
separation wherever they have existed together in considerable masses. 

The policy of segregating the Negro in the United States has 
not come about through any consideration of expediency, or mutual 
advantage, but has resulted from the natural dispositions of the races. 
In the Southern states the general policy of segregation is preferred 
by both races, but differences of opinion exist as to the place and 
manner of drawing the line of separation. 

In all of the Southern towns the Negroes tend to live together in 
one or more sections, generally designated as Africa, Haiti, Snow Hill, 
etc. In a number of settlements and incorporated towns all, or nearly 
all, of the inhabitants are Negroes. There are fifty of such towns 
listed in the Negro Year Book, published at Tuskegee Institute, Ala- 
bama. Of these, thirteen are in Oklahoma, six in Georgia, five in 
Alabama, five in Texas, four in California, four in Ohio, and from 
one to three in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, New Jersey, 
North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Nebraska, Tennessee, Kansas and 

*The Direction of Human Evolution, p. 53. 


472 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Florida. Also there are many towns in the South and West where 
Negroes are not permitted to reside. These anti-Negro towns are 
found mostly in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Indiana, and 
in the smaller towns in the Appalachian region of Virginia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, also in some small towns’ 
along the Atlantic Coast in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. 

Even in agricultural regions of the South there is a tendency 
toward segregation. “A natural segregation of the races,” says Baker, 
“is apparently taking place. I saw it everywhere I went in the black 
belt. The white people are gravitating towards the towns, or into 
white neighborhoods, and leaving the land, even though still owned 
by white men, more and more to the exclusive occupation of the 
Negroes. Many black counties are growing blacker while a few white 
counties are growing whiter.”’ ? 

In the cities the Negroes have their distinctive residence quarters, 
their own banks, clothing and dry-goods stores, grocery stores, drug 
stores, and barber shops; their professional class of dentists, physicians, 
and preachers; and their social groups, lodges, picture shows, churches, 
and Young Men’s Christian Associations and Young Women’s Chris- 
tian Associations. 

Says the mulatto Thomas, “in many sections, light-hued negroes 
associate together, and hold themselves as much aloof from contact 
with the blacks as do the most exclusive whites.” ° 

In some Western states it has seemed necessary to regulate segre- 
gation in order to prevent race friction, leading to crime, riots, and 
other disturbances of the peace. For example, in Kansas City, where 
the Negroes constitute only about three and one-half percent of the 
population, they made such a showing of numbers in the city schools 
in some districts as to give rise to perpetual animosity, and frequent 
clashes between the white and Negro children. At length the an- 
tagonism led to an outbreak, and the killing of a white boy. This 
tragedy aroused public sentiment, which brought pressure to bear upon 
the state legislature and resulted in the establishment of special schools 
for blacks. 

Everywhere in the North and West where the Negroes are found, 
they are more or less segregated from the whites geograpically, and 
also in churches, theaters, hotels, and retail stores, not by law, but by 
custom, and the good sense of both races. 


* Following the Color Line, p. 70. 
*The American Negro, p. 202. 


RACE SEGREGATION AS A SOLUTION 473 


In the Southern states, where the two races are thrown together in 
great masses, there would be perpetual clashes, and outbreaks of 
violence in schools, churches, hotels, and in places of amusement if 
there were not some local regulation of racial contact. Legalized 
separation of the races in the South pertains to schools, hotels, restau- 
rants, theaters, street cars, and railway cars. 

Recently there has been some agitation among the whites in favor 
of laws requiring the Negroes to occupy specified blocks in cities and 
specified areas of farm land. In 1912 the legislature of Louisiana 
authorized the segregation of whites and black in the cities, and the 
same year a similar law was passed in Virginia. Ordinances com- 
pelling residential segregation of the Negro have been enacted in Okla- 
homa City, Tulsa, Baltimore, and St. Louis. 

No state, however, has yet enacted a law requiring the segregation 
of Negroes in agricultural districts. But such laws exist in South 
Africa. Commenting upon the policy of territorial segregation of the 
Negroes in South Africa, Evans says that: “the separation of the 
races is held by a majority of the Europeans to be the true policy, 
and the principle has been accepted by the Legislature. In 1913 a 
Land Bill providing for territorial separation was passed through 
Parliament, and a Commission was appointed under the Act. It is 
now engaged in provisionally demarcating the areas which it is in- 
tended should eventually be white and black respectively, and mean- 
while the leasing and sale of land between the races is prohibited.” 4 

The proposition to segregate the Negro in rural districts of the 
South has been championed by Clarence Poe, and other Southern 
leaders of high standing. One of the chief arguments in support of it 
is that it would free white women of the fear of attack, and encourage 
white immigration. But up to the present time sentiment in favor 
of it does not seem to be strong or gaining ground. D. W. Weather- 
ford, field secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association, ob- 
jects that a rural segregation law would tend to drive the Negroes 
into towns where they are already too numerous for their good, or 
the good of the white people. He shares the opinion of most white 
people that it is best that the Negroes stay in the country and become 
landowners.® 

The Southern Negroes themselves oppose this form of segregation, 
and generally oppose any compulsory segregation, but they heartily 


“Black and White in the Southern States, p. 258. 
°“Race Segregation in the Rural South,’ Survey, Jan. 2, 1915. 


4r4 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


favor the segregation which takes place spontaneously. They prefer 
their own social life, which in many respects is fuller and more joy- 
ous than that of the whites. They prefer their separate schools, 
churches, lodges, clubs, and other institutions. They do not want 
social equality, nor do they often give it a thought. 

Booker T. Washington was of the opinion that: “This division of 
the races is an advantage to us as a people, in so far as it permits 
us to become the teachers of our own people. No better discipline 
can be given to a people than that which they gain by being their 
own teachers. They can have no greater opportunity than that of 
developing within themselves the. ideals and the leadership which are 
to make them not merely in law, but in fact, the masters of their own 
fortunes.” ® 

The leaders of the Negroes in the North generally oppose every 
kind of race segregation. Not having an equal opportunity with 
their Southern brothers to maintain schools, churches, and other in- 
stitutions for their own race, their social life is often circumscribed 
in a way which awakens a sense of loneliness and isolation. They 
are therefore very sensitive to the discriminations against them by the 
whites, and their sensitiveness is the keener because they are mostly 
mulattoes, who, having less of the gregarious instinct than the pure 
Negro, feel disinclined to mingle with the blacks. 

The white people outside of the South who have written about 
Negro segregation generally commend it as necessary and wise in 
sections of the country where Negro population is large. 

Field, in his book, Glimpses of New England, says: “That the 
whites should desire to keep to themselves is not to be ascribed to 
arrogance; it does not even imply an assumption of superiority. It 
is not that one race is above the other, but that the two races are 
different, and that, while they may live together in the most friendly 
relations, each will consult its own happiness best by working along 
its own lines. This is a matter of instinct, which is often wiser 
than reason. We cannot fight against instinct, nor legislate against 
it; if we do we shall find it stronger than our resolutions and our 
laws.” ? 

J. M. Mecklin, of the Pittsburgh Psychological Institute, in his 
book, Democracy and Race Friction, expresses his opinion as follows: 
“Viewed from the standpoint of the good of society as a whole, 


*The American Negro of Today, pp. 67-70. 
ge te 


RACE SEGREGATION AS A SOLUTION 475 


laws requiring social segregation in the South are undoubtedly based 
upon a sound social philosophy.” ® 

A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, believes that: “Race separa- 
tion would give greater opportunities to the Negro, and reduce the 
contact with the lower class of whites out of which comes most of 
the race violence in the South. It is substantially the method applied 
in the Northern cities, though nowhere to any degree as in the South. 
It is a method which, with all its hardships to the Negro of the higher 
class, comes nearest being a modus vivendi between the races.” ® 

Maurice Evans, an Englishman long resident in South Africa, who 
has studied the Negro in the United States, takes the ground that 
segregation is working to the advantage of the Negro: “the segrega- 
tion of the race has thrown the members on their own powers, and 
has developed the qualities of resourcefulness. The very process which 
may have seemed to some like a policy of oppression, has in fact re- 
sulted in a process of development.” ?° 

What would happen to the Negroes in the South, if they were not 
segregated? They would have to compete in every occupation with 
the whites; they would find the door of opportunity practically closed 
to them in all the higher walks of life. It would rarely happen that 
a Negro could secure a position as teacher in a school, as pastor of 
a church, or as editor of a paper. There would be no Negro doctors, 
dentists, lawyers, actors, or singers. Even in the unskilled trades they 
would have to compete with the white man. 

What does the Negro gain by segregation? He finds in the South 
a large field of employment open to him with little or no competition 
from the whites. In other words, segregation enables him to lead an 
easier and less strenuous existence, which insures to him a diminish- 
ing death-rate and a higher birth-rate; also, it enables him to resist 
the downward pressure into poverty, vice, and crime. Above all, 
segregation builds up cooperation and race pride, and, by diminishing 
the incentive to imitate the whites, tends to bring out in the race its 
special aptitudes and geniuses. The progress of mankind can be 
best advanced by each race’s developing the genius and culture peculiar 
to it instead of striving to imitate another. 

Segregation enables the Negro to find among his own people as 
many opportunities in the higher walks of life as are found among 


mer 200. 
*Quoted by Evans, Black and White in the Southern States, p. 146. 
* Evans, op. cit., p. 156. 


476 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





the white people. He may be a merchant, banker, doctor, lawyer, dentist, 
school-teacher, college president, pastor of a church, editor of a paper, 
actor, musician, officer in a lodge, and so forth. In many Southern 
states there are more Negroes holding high positions in professional 
life than in the entire territory of Brazil, where segregation has largely 
broken down as a result of racial intermixture. 

But whatever may be said of the expediency or advantages of 
segregation, it cannot be regarded as a solution of the Negro prob- 
lem. No matter how earnestly both races may cooperate to make 
it work satisfactorily, it will always be a source of racial jealousy 
and friction, and, in its practical applications, will often work hard- 
ships and injustice to large groups, giving rise to perpetual com- 
plaints, animosities, and demands for readjustment. 

In sections where large masses of Negroes and whites are thrown 
together segregation may be said to work with a considerable degree 
of satisfaction and advantage to both races, but in sections where the 
Negroes form a small minority of the population, a policy of segrega- 
tion works a great hardship upon the Negro, depriving him of many 
essential privileges which his own race is unable to offer. It restricts 
his opportunities in the higher avenues of employment. - 

But whatever advantages there may be in segregation there is 
always the drawback that it keeps each race aloof from the other on its 
best side. “The best side of every civilized people,” says Merriam, 
“is seen in its homes. The white and the black homes of the South 
are strangers to each other.” 

The race on the lower level of culture is apt to come in contact 
mainly with the lower elements of the race on the higher level of cul- 
ture. James Bryce was of the opinion that the contact of an advanced 
and a backward race in the same territory was productive of evil 
consequences to both races, and he therefore thought that such contact 
should be avoided as far as possible. He says: “There are the cases 
in which an Advanced and a Backward race find themselves living 
side by side in large masses upon the same soil, having entered it 
at different times. Instances are found in the former Slave States of 
North America, where seven millions of Negroes and fourteen mil- 
lions of whites dwell together! in Algeria, in British South Africa, 
and in Western South America, in both of which latter regions the 
numerical preponderance of the Backward races is very great, though 
for South America no trustworthy statistics exist. 

™ The Negro and the Nation, p. 408. 


RACE SEGREGATION AS A SOLUTION 477 


“Where the two races occupy different parts of the country, or 
where one is mainly rural, the other mainly urban, or where the habits 
of life are so dissimilar that opportunities for social intercourse occur 
but sparingly, occasions for collision may be few. This has been the case 
over most of Spanish America, and is to a great extent true also of 
Algeria. But where the races live in the same towns and villages, 
and follow the same pursuits, antagonism is sure to arise. It arises 
from Inequality, because as one of the races is stronger in intel- 
ligence and will, its average members treat members of the weaker 
race scornfully or roughly, when they can do so with impunity. It 
arises from Dissimilarity of character, because neither race under- 
_ stands the other’s way of thinking and feeling, so that each gives 
offense even without meaning it. It arises from Distrust, because the 
sense of not comprehending one another makes each suspect the other 
of faithlessness or guile. The Backward race, being the weaker, is 
usually that which tries to protect itself by guile, while the more 
advanced race relies upon the prestige of its knowledge, the force of 
its will, and its ingrained habit of dominance. Violence, when once 
it breaks out, is apt to spread, because the men of each race take 
sides in any tumult, and apt to be accompanied by cruelty, because 
pity is blunter toward those who stand outside the racial or social 
pale, and the passions of a racial conflict sweep all but the gentlest 
natures away. Every outrage on one side provokes an outrage on 
the other: if a series of outrages occur, each race bands itself to- 
gether for self-defense, awaiting attack, and probably provoking at-~ 
tack by the alarm its combination inspires. Nor are difficulties in 
the sphere of industry wanting, for the more advanced race may re- 
fuse to work in company with the Backward one, or may seek to 
relegate the latter to the basest and worst-paid kinds of work. So 
too the Backward race may give offense by working for lower wages 
and thus reducing the general scale of payment. 

“These troubles may be apprehended whatever the form of gov- 
ernment, for they spring out of the nature of things. But others vex 
the political sphere. If one race enjoys privileges denied to the 
other, it is sure to abuse its power to the prejudice of the Back- 
ward people, placing them, it may be, under civil as well as political 
disabilities, or imposing heavier taxes upon them, or refusing them 
their fair share of benefits from the public revenue. If, on the 
other hand, both races are treated alike, granted the same suffrage, 
made eligible for the same offices, each will be disposed to organize 


478 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


itself separately for political purposes, so that a permanent separa- 
tion of parties will be created, which, because irrespective of the 
issues that naturally arise from time to time, may prevent those from 
being dealt with on their merits, and may check the natural ebbs 
and flows of political life. The nation will, in fact, be rather two 
nations than one, may waste its force on internal dissensions, may 
lose its unity of action at moments of public danger. Evils of this 
order tend to be more acute the more democratic a government be- 
comes. ‘Two courses are open, but each will have elements of danger. 
If political privileges are refused to the Backward race, the contrast 
between principle and practice, between a theoretic recognition of 
the rights of man as man and the denial of them to a section of the 
population, will be palpable and indefensible. If that lower section 
be admitted to share in the government, an element will be admitted 
the larger part of which will be unfit for the suffrage, being specially 
accessible to bribery and specially liable to intimidation. So, too, 
though the evils described may exist whatever be the condition of 
the lower race, they will become, in one sense at least, more accentu- 
ated the more that race advances in intelligence and knowledge. Slaves 
or serfs who have been bred up to look upon subjection as their 
natural lot bear it as the dispensation of Nature. When they have 
attained a measure of independence, when they speak the tongue and 
read the books and begin to share the ideas of the dominant race, 
they resent the inferiority, be it legal or social, to which they find 
themselves condemned. Discontent appears and social friction is in- 
tensified, not only because occasions for it grow more frequent, but 
because the temper of each race is more angry and suspicious. These 
phenomena, present even where the races are not very diverse in 
habits of life or level of culture, as is the case with Greeks, Armenians, 
and Turks in various parts of the East, or with Moors and Jews in 
Morocco, may become of graver import as between races so far apart 
as whites and Negroes in the Gulf States of North America, or whites 
and Malays in the Philippine Isles, or Europeans and native fellaheen 
in Egypt. 

“Although the troubles which follow upon the contact of peoples 
in different stages of civilization are more serious in some countries 
and under some conditions than they are likely to prove in others, 
they are always serious enough to raise the question of the best 
means of avoiding such a contact, if it can be avoided. 

“That contact can be averted by inducing European peoples to 


RACE SEGREGATION AS A SOLUTION 479 
forbear from annexing or settling in the countries inhabited by the 
colored races is not to be expected. The impulses which move 
these peoples in the present will not be checked by the prospect of 
evils in the future. Besides, the work of annexation is practically 
done already. Neither can it be suggested that one of two disparate 
races already established should be removed to leave the ground free 
to the other. No one proposes that the French should quit Algeria, 
or the English India, or the Russians Western Turkistan, not to add 
that the mischiefs likely to follow such a withdrawal would be greater 
than the difficulties which the presence of the conquerors at this mo- 
ment causes. Men talked at one time of deporting the seven millions 
of Negroes from the Southern States of America to Africa, but this 
utterly impracticable scheme has been dropped. The only case in 
which the question of preventing contact arises in a practical form 
is where immigrants of a Backward race are found swarming into 
a country peopled by a European stock. Such a case has arisen in 
California and British Columbia, whither Chinese have migrated, as 
also in Australia as respects Chinese, and Japanese, and Indian coolies, 
and in Natal. In all these cases statutes have been passed intended 
to arrest or to limit the influx of the Backward race; and in Cali- 
fornia and Australia, where the methods have been most stringent, 
the desired result is being attained.” ” 

In discussing race segregation we need to bear in mind that it has 
no necessary connection with our notion of racial superiority or in- 
feriority. The tendency of races, occupying the same territory, to 
live apart is due primarily to the fact that they are visibly and strik- 
ingly unlike. For instance, our opposition to Japanese colonization on 
our Pacific Coast is not due to our belief in the inferiority of the 
Japanese people. Even if we believed that they were ever so superior 
to ourselves our opposition to their colonization here, and our dis- 
inclination to assimilate them, would be none the less pronounced. 
And, if the situation were reversed, and the white people should at- 
tempt to colonize anywhere in Japanese territory, the Japanese would 
feel and act towards our intrusion just as we feel and act towards 
their intrusion into our territory. If the Japanese could understand 
the fact that racial segregation is due solely to physical differences, 
and not to notions of superiority or inferiority, they would be able 
to accept it with good grace, and even to welcome it. 

The tendency of the whites and Negroes in the United States to 

“Bryce, Relation of Advanced and Backward Races of Mankind, p. 70. 


480 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


live apart would be as ineradicable as it is now if the Negroes were 
believed to be in all respects superior to the whites. Of course, wher- 
ever two dissimilar races come in contact on different levels of culture, 
the tendency to segregate is intensified; but it is entirely erroneous 
to suppose that segregation is solely or fundamentally due to differ- 
ences of culture. 

It is very confusing and, I think, very unfortunate that we have 
come to use the term “social equality’ in connection with the dis- 
cussion of our race problem. The disinclination of the Negroes and 
whites toward free social intermingling should not be continually as- 
sociated with the idea that the Negro is inferior and undeserving of 
social elevation and respect. While most Negroes are, in fact, in- 
ferior to most white people, the opposition to the social intermixture 
of the races is not due fundamentally to the inferiority of the Negroes, 
but to the fact that the natural differences between the races render 
social intermixture incompatible with the natural disposition of both 
races. Opposition to free social intermingling would be the same no 
matter what might be the culture level of the Negro. 

Certainly, it is not good manners to wound the feelings of cul- 
tivated Negroes by implying their inferiority when we wish to con- 
vey the idea merely that the best interest of both races requires that 
they move within their respective social spheres. The more enlight- 
ened white people of the South want to see the Negro rise to what- 
ever heights are possible to him socially or otherwise among his own 
people. To say: “We oppose the social intermingling of the races,” 
would, in most cases, better convey the idea in mind than to say: “We 
oppose social equality.” 


CHAPTER 61 
AVFREEASTADE INVGHE BLAGK«BELT 


Proposal to Create a Colored Free State out of the Southern Black Belt— 
Possibility That Immigration of Dark Whites from Southern Europe or 
Mexico May Lead to a Hybrid Race Similar to That of Tropical South 
America—Supposition That the Political Power of This Hybrid Race Would 
Be Intolerable to the Northern and Western States, and Lead to the Erection 
of a Colored Free State 


T the joint meeting of the American and British Associations for 

the Advancement of Science in Canada in 1924, President J. W. 
Gregory of the Geographical Section of the British Association read 
a paper on the “Color Line,’ which he characterized as the problem of 
the present century. 

Referring to the problem in the United States, Dr. Gregory touched 
briefly upon several of the proposed solutions. In regard to amalgam- 
ation, he “quoted some authorities as anticipating the betterment 
of the human race by interracial fusion, but said that modern stu- 
dents of eugenics supported the view that ‘the interbreeding of widely 
different types produces weak, inferior offspring with a chaotic con- 
stitution.’ He quoted from a recent detailed study to show that the 
children of Lapp-Norwegian (Mongolian-Caucasian) unions were in- 
ferior physically and mentally to both parents. 

“*This doctrine,’’”’ he said, “ ‘cannot be regarded as established, but 
the strong intellectual aversion to such unions among the Teutonic 
people will doubtless prevent the adoption of race amalgamation be- 
tween the negro and whites in North America and Northern Europe.’ ” 

He went on to say that he did not regard disfranchisement, or 
segregation, or deportation as a practicable solution. “No simple 
measure,” he said, “that could be imposed on the country by the Leg- 
islature appears to be available, but some solution may be reached by 
a process of drift. It is for the geographer to search for the factors 
that are likely to guide this drift. 

“One of the most significant movements in the Southern States is 
for much of the agricultural work to pass into the hands of immigrants 
from Southern Europe, while the negroes, through the restlessness 

481 


482 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


which is the weakest element in their character, tend to settle in 
the towns. Stone, a representative Southerner, remarks that planters 
must seek more reliable labor than that of the negro who has already 
been replaced in tobacco cultivation in Kentucky. Booker Washing- 
ton repeatedly called attention to the seriousness of the danger that 
the negro would be driven from the skilled occupations. The re- 
cent agreement between Italy and Mexico for the settlement of 500,000 
Italians in Mexico would provide an additional source for Italian 
inflow into the Southern States. The feeling against interracial mar- 
riage is not so strong among the people of Southern Europe as it is 
with the Teutons; hence extensive South-European immigration into 
the cotton districts may lead to their future occupation by a hybrid 
race similar to that of tropical South America. This process would 
render impossible the continued refusal of political and municipal 
rights to any citizen who has a trace of negro blood. The colored 
people would regain the suffrage, and the political developments of 
the Southern States on normal American lines would be impossible. 
If the whites in the Southern States be divided between Republicans 
and Democrats, the negro vote would hold the balance of power; and 
owing to the considerable overrepresentation of the Southern States 
in proportion to population, American policies might be determined by 
the negro vote. Such a situation would be intolerable to the Northern 
and Western States. Hence, to avoid it, they might agree to the 
Southeastern States being formed into a group with a special measure 
of home rule in some departments of Federal jurisdiction. 

“This solution may take a century or more to develop; but the 
geographical considerations indicate it as the most probable issue from 
the negro strength in the Southeastern States.” 

Of all the possible outcomes of the Negro problem, this one of 
converting a number of Southern commonwealths into a free colored 
state is the most deplorable to contemplate. In the island of Haiti 
the Negroes got possession of the territory by massacring the whites. 
In the Southeastern United States, if Dr. Gregory’s prediction comes 
to pass, the Negroes will gain possession of the territory by the blood- 
less and easy “process of drift.” 

The probabilities of conditions arising in the Black Belt which 
would justify and make necessary the conversion of that section 
into a free state are not very great. 

If the Negroes of the Black Belt continue to drift toward the 
towns, their places on the farms might, as Dr. Gregory supposes, be 


A FREE STATE’ IN’ PHESBEACK BELT 483 





—_ 


filled by the immigration of the Mexican “greaser” (so-called in the 
Southwest), who is a mixture of the Indian and South European. 
In fact, in the Southwestern states, particularly in Texas, the num- 
ber of Mexican immigrants who have already taken the places of the 
Negro on the farms and on railroads is quite noticeable. Should 
this immigration continue for a century it is conceivable that a vast 
majority of the population of the Black Belt might be made up of 
miscellaneous hybrids. The Mexicans might intermarry largely with 
the Negroes, especially with those of the mulatto type, and the average 
complexion of the colored population would, in consequence, be much 
lighter than it is now. Then it would be impossible in the Southern 
states, as in Brazil and Cuba, to draw a color line, for the reason 
that in many instances it would be impossible to tell whether a slightly 
colored person had in his veins Negro, Indian, or Mexican blood. 
The attempt to segregate the colored and white people of the South 
in schools, churches, railroads, hotels, and other public places, would 
lead to such confusion as to become entirely impracticable. Also, 
illiteracy presumably becoming a thing of the past, it would be im- 
practicable to formulate any franchise laws which would exclude the 
colored voters, who would all stand together, and absolutely dominate 
the states of the Black Belt. In national politics it is conceivable, 
as Dr. Gregory surmises, that the colored vote might hold the bal- 
ance of power, forming a colored bloc which would prove so obstructive 
to legislation, and so generally obnoxious that the people of the North- 
eastern and Western states would rather erect a free state for the 
colored people than to tolerate them as a part of the union. The 
problem of the Colored Belt would be a repetition of the Irish prob- 
lem of Great Britain. In view of the increasing trend toward socialistic 
legislation, it is more than probable that the Colored Belt would make 
short shrift of the problem of alien ownership of land. Either by 
means of confiscation or taxation the plantations belonging to the 
native or alien whites would be speedily transferred to the colored 
peasant. 

The chief fact militating against Dr. Gregory’s prophecy of an 
eventual free colored state is that the proportion of Negroes in that 
region is not on the increase. The declining birth-rate of the Negroes 
in the Black Belt, together with their high death-rate and yearly migra- 
tion, not only give them a diminishing rate.of increase but, according 
to the last census, that of 1920, an actual falling off in numbers. In 
the decade 1910-20, the Negro population of Mississippi diminished 


484 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


by 74,303 or seven percent; that of Alabama diminished by 7,630 or 
eight percent; that of Louisiana diminished by 13,617, or 1.8 percent. 
Georgia was the only state in the Black Belt which gained in popula- 
tion between 1910 and 1920, and her increase did not offset the losses 
of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. The present tendency is for 
the Negroes of the Black Belt to move into other Southern states. 
For illustration, the Negro population of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, 
Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland increased during the 
Ig10-20 decade to an extent which nearly equalled the losses in the 
other states. 

There is, therefore, no present indication that the Negro population 
in the Black Belt will preponderate over the white population or gain 
in relative strength. 

The question which remains as necessary to evaluate Dr. Gregory’s 
prophecy of a future free colored state, is: Will Mexican immigrants 
come in to fill the places of the emigrated blacks, and, if they do, 
will they complicate the color problem by intermarrying with the 
blacks ? 

The trend of agriculture in the United States is away from cul- 
ture dependent upon human muscle or horse power, and toward culture 
dependent upon mechanical power and machinery. Less and less labor 
is necessary per acre of product, and more and more capital. Inten- 
sive farming is taking the place of extensive farming. This change 
is being hastened in the South by the recent Negro migration. 

As more capital and machinery come to be employed in agricul- 
ture, the number of native whites who will take up agriculture as a 
career will increase, and the demand for labor of the Mexican type 
will be diminished. 

It does not seem at all likely, therefore, that the immigration of 
Mexicans into the South will ever be on a large scale. Before the 
lapse of another century the United States will be overpopulated, 
like the countries of Europe, and will be exporting instead of importing 
labor. 

Should Mexicans come to the South in any considerable number, 
I do not think that they would intermarry with the Negroes to the 
extent that Dr. Gregory supposes. In the Central or South Ameri- 
can states the South Europeans have intermarried with the Indians, 
but not with the Negroes.. The mestizo, half Spanish and half Indian, 
has somewhat intermarried with the Negro, but in the majority of 
instances the hybrid offspring of the mestizo and Negro is the result 


A FREE STATE IN THE BLACK BELT 485 | 


of illicit relations. The term Negro, especially African Negro, is 
odious alike to the Spaniard and mestizo. The Mexican “greasers,” 
who have come into Oklahoma and Texas, show as little tendency to 
mix with the Negro as the native Caucasians. There does not, there- 
fore, seem to be a strong probability of the free intermarrying of the 
Negroes and Mexicans within the next century. 

To sum up, the facts in the case do not point decisively to a future 
free colored state in the Black Belt as the outcome of the race prob- 
lem in the South, if the problem be left to the “process of drift.” 


CHAPTER 62 
CIVIL EOUALTRY AS Ay SOLUSLION 


Practical Difficulties of Enforcing Civil Equality in a Nation of Racial Diversity 
—Failure to Enforce Civil Equality in the South During the Reconstruction 
Period—Result of Effort to Eliminate Color Discrimination in the Franchise 
—Theory of John Stuart Mill That Only One Race Can Govern in One 
Territory—Theory of Charles Francis Adams That the Principle of Equality 
Applied to the Negro and Caucasian Works Only Chaos 


EARLY all of the Negroes in the United States, and a large ele- 

ment of the whites, believe that the solution of the Negro prob- 
lem is a very simple one, namely, to give the Negro the same civil 
rights as the white man. In other words, the solution is to enforce 
the decrees of our Constitution which prohibit any civil discrimina- 
tions on account of race or color. This solution was the one advocated 
by William Lloyd Garrison, and his anti-slavery followers prior to 
the Civil War, and, since the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, 
and Fifteenth Amendments to our Constitution, it has been earnestly 
desired by a majority of the white people of the United States, in- 
cluding many men of the highest patriotism and finest idealism. 

The phrase in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are 
created equal, met with the enthusiastic and universal approbation 
of the American people. This declaration, however, was not under- 
stood as meaning anything more than that all of the white men com- 
posing the population had inalienable right to equal opportunity in 
this new country. The author of the Declaration represented a state 
where Negro slavery was a recognized institution, and, though he 
deplored the existence of the institution, it is very evident he had 
no idea that the Negroes would ever be citizens of our republic. 
Down to the Civil War, even in states which had abolished slavery, 
the Negro was not allowed civil rights, except in Massachusetts, Ver- 
mont, Maine, and Rhode Island. The organic law of Virginia, as 
of other slaveholding states, contained the expression: “All men are 
born free and equal.” 

At the time of the adoption of our Constitution it was so gen- 
erally understood that citizenship in this country was for Caucasians 

486 


CIVIL EQUALITY AS A SOLUTION 487 


only that the question was not even discussed, and all of the original 
declarations of equality in our organic laws must be interpreted as 
having reference to the white population only. 

Soon after the adoption of our Constitution, however, the declara- 
tion of equality came to be interpreted literally, and to be applied to 
the Negroes. The champions of the abolition of slavery used the 
declaration of equality as an argument in favor of their cause, and 
began to point out the inconsistency of such a declaration with the 
existence of slavery. But, while the equality argument was used to 
combat slavery, it was not urged in favor of giving the Negro the 
right to vote and hold office. Laws disqualifying Negroes from voting 
or holding office continued in existence in Northern states which had 
long before abolished slavery, and in Western states where slavery 
had never existed. The idea that the exericse of the franchise was 
one of the rights necessarily belonging to a people “born free and 
equal’ was a very gradual development, and never became widespread 
until the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 

The Northern people believed that the exercise of the franchise 
by the Negroes was the only means by which the latter could protect 
themselves against oppressive laws made by their former masters, 
and the idea prevailed generally throughout the North that there 
should be in our republic neither civil nor social discriminations on 
account of race or color. 

It may be that sectional hatred, and the desire to humiliate and 
punish the South, played a part in the enactment of the Thirteenth, 
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to our Constitution, but there 
is no reason to doubt that most of the Northern people favoring these 
amendments were actuated primarily by humanitarian considerations 
and high idealism, and that they could see no reason why the new 
provisions of our Constitution, so evidently just from a theoretical 
point of view, might not be fully realized. 

But, alas, for the consequences! During the Reconstruction Period 
the effort to enforce civil and social equality in the South by the 
bayonet was a signal failure, and, since the withdrawal of the bayonet, 
neither civil nor social equality has existed in any Southern state. 

Before the experiment of civil equality was tried in the South, 
practically all men who knew human nature, and had had an oppor- 
tunity to observe the effect of racial contacts, foresaw the impossibility 
of two races as unlike as the Negro and the Caucasian living together 
on terms of equality. De Tocqueville in 1830 said he could not imagine 


488 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“that the black and white races will ever live in any country upon an 
equal footing.” * 

William H. Seward, speaking at Detroit, Michigan, September 4, 
1860, made this statement: “The great fact is now fully realized that 
the African race here is a foreign and feeble element, like the Indians, 
incapable of assimilation . . . and that it is a pitiful exotic, unwisely 
and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is un- 
profitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native 
vineyard.” ? 

Lincoln, in his debate with Douglas at Quincy, October 15, 1858, 
spoke as follows: “I have no purpose to introduce political and social 
equality between the white and black races. There is a physical differ- 
ence between the two which, in my judgment, would probably forbid 
them living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch 
as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as 
Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the 
superior position.” * 

In the debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, he said: 
“TI will say that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing 
about, in any way, the social and political equality of the white and 
black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making 
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor 
to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this 
that there is a physical difference between the white and black races 
which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on 
terms of social and political equality.” + 

Not only does observation of racial contact in the United States 
lead to the conviction that equality cannot exist between the Negroes 
and whites, but an acquaintance with history leads to the same con- 
viction. Thus far no two races differing in any marked degree have 
ever lived together harmoniously in the same geographical area. 

The Roman Empire included within its boundaries many contrast- 
ing ethnic groups, but all of these were separated from each other geo- 
graphically, and the same is true of the modern British Empire. Even 
when ethnic groups differing only slightly in physical appearance have 


* Democracy in America, Vol. 2, p. 238. 

* Quoted by Munford, Virginia’s Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession, p. 167. 
* Quoted ibid., p. 1609. 

* Quoted ibid., p. 168. 


CIVIL EQUALITY AS A SOLUTION 480 


been brought into close contact under the same government, they have 
been slow to amalgamate and produce a common culture. 

The Jewish people, who take rank with any other race in physical 
type and intellectual capacity, have never assimilated the culture of any 
other race, and have rarely, if ever, enjoyed equal rights under any gov- 
ernment of which they have been subjects. 

The nearest approach to a harmonious cooperation of different ethnic 
groups under the same government is found in the Republic of Switz- 
erland; but, even there, we find the different ethnic groups geographi- 
cally isolated, preserving their respective language and traditions, and, 
through the system of local government, each living largely independent 
of the other. The experience of Switzerland throws no light whatever 
upon the problem of ethnic contact such as we have in the United 
States. 

The French nation might be cited as an example of rather complete 
assimilation of several originally different ethnic elements, but in this 
case the racial contrasts have been so slight that, from pre-Roman times 
to the present, they have been freely intermarrying. The example of 
France, therefore, throws no light on the situation in the United States, 
for the reason that there is no race problem where ethnic groups differ 
so slightly that they spontaneously amalgamate. 

In any state where the Negro population is in a majority or con- 
stitutes a large proportion of the citizenship, the feeling of racial con- 
sciousness prompts the Negroes to vote together, and they, with an ele- 
ment of scalawag whites who wish to ride into office on the backs of 
the Negro, gain control of the state governments to the exclusion of the 
whites. Aside from the incompetence and corruption which necessa- 
rily follow such rule, the outstanding thing is the strange contradiction 
which the conditions and consequences reflect upon our constitutional 
declarations of equality; on the one hand the declaration forbids civil 
discrimination on the basis of color and, on the other hand, imposes a 
régime wherein the whole civil control actually depends on color. This 
is a political reductio ad absurdum. 

What happened in the South as a result of the effort to enforce 
civil equality between the whites and the blacks would have happened 
in any other country where any other two races visibly different existed 
together in large masses. All races of men are more or less gregarious, 
and wherever, in the same territory, two conspicuously different races 
come together in masses, there is developed a consciousness of kind 


490 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


which inclines the members of each race to draw together in common 
sympathy for common action. In each race a sentiment of loyalty is 
awakened which leads its members to prefer each other in every sphere 
of competition or rivalry with another race. 

The natural tendency of the Negroes to feel a consciousness of kind 
and to sympathize with races of kindred kind, is evidenced in the fact 
that when the Japanese defeated the Russians in 1905, the Negro press 
gave “a quite clear cry of exaltation over the defeat of a white race by 
a dark one.’ ® 

In political action, each race stands together, and the strongest, in 
numbers or otherwise, dominates the government. Therefore, human 
nature being constituted as it is, it is impossible for two races visibly 
different to live together in large masses in the same territory on terms 
of equality. 

In the domain of social science, as in that of natural science, a truth 
can be arrived at only by experiment and induction. If the chemist 
finds that two elements, subjected to innumerable tests, have never 
united, he will tell you that they are not assimilable, and he would not 
think of writing a formula calling for their amalgamation; and so in 
social science, when we find that two races, subjected to innumerable 
tests, have never assimilated, we are rational in assuming that they are 
not assimilable, and we need not be surprised to find that political for- 
mule calling for their assimilation fail to work. 

We would have had a race problem in California, similar to that in 
the Southern states, and with no less deplorable consequences, if our 
national government had not put a stop to the Mongolian immigration, 
but had attempted to enforce social and civil equality between the Mon- 
golians and the native whites. The Mongolians, becoming a large ele- 
ment of the population, would have been drawn together, like the South- 
ern Negroes, by their consciousness of kind, and would have voted ac- 
cording to color; and wherever, in any city or county they were in a ma- 
jority or nearly so, they would have dominated the government, and 
their government would have been one in fact based on color. 

The Chicago Tribune in a recent editorial says: “ We admit 
frankly that if political equality had meant the election of Negro mayors, 
judges, and a majority of Negroes in the city council the whites would 
not have tolerated it. We do not believe that the whites of Chicago 
would be any different from the whites of the South in this respect.” ° 


*Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction, p. 240. 
*Quoted in Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 551. 


CIVIL EQUALITY AS A SOLUTION 491 


John Stuart Mill long ago announced the sociological law that two 
unlike races, occupying the same territory, cannot enjoy equal civil 
rights, that only one race in fact can constitute the governing power. 
Wherever two or more dissimilar races are found in large masses with- 
in the same political boundaries, each is drawn together by conscious- 
ness of kind, and there is a perpetual and destructive conflict for su- 
premacy. Was not the World War set in motion by such racial fric- 
tion in Southeastern Europe? 

It may be argued that the consciousness of kind, which tends to seg- 
regate races and prevent their harmonious cooperation on equal terms, 
is a mere prejudice which ought to be overcome by enlightenment. But 
in social science, as in physical science, we have to be governed by facts. 
We cannot decree the assimilation of two races any more than a chem- 
ist can decree the mixing of oil and water. The fact is that certain races 
do not assimilate; and cannot do so for the reason that their conscious- 
ness of kind, which separates them in sympathy, is the outcome of in- 
eradicable impulses of human nature. Civil equality or any other kind 
of equality between races as unlike as the white and black, and mingled 
as they are in the same territory, is a dream which can never be real- 
ized. In attempting to apply our constitutional declarations against dis- 
criminations on account of race or color, it is necessary to be governed 
by “the rule of reason”: on the one hand, the Supreme Court, in en- 
deavoring to protect the Negro against injustice, has to guard against 
injustice to the white people en masse. In the last analysis our Su- 
preme Court can only decide whether the de facto government shall be 
Caucasian or Negro. 

Charles Francis Adams, writing in the Century Magazine in 1906, 
expressed a doubt if it were possible for the Negro and Caucasian to 
live on equal terms under the same government, and therefore he ques- 
tioned the wisdom of the United States government in attempting to give 
the Negro full civil rights through the several amendments to our Con- 
stitution. He quotes this statement by Sir Samuel Baker: “So long 
as it is generally considered that the Negro and the White Man are to 
be governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so 
long will the former remain a thorn in the side of every community to 
which he may unhappily belong.” 

Commenting upon this, Adams says: “If true, this strikes at the 
very root of our American polity,—the equality of man before the law. 
We cannot conform to it. If the fact must be conceded,—so much the 
worse for the fact. By all good Americans at least, the theory will 


492 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


none the less be maintained, the principle confidently asserted. We are 
thus confronted by a condition. The existence of an ineradicable and 
insurmountable race difference is indisputable. The white man and the 
black man cannot flourish together, the latter being considerable in num- 
ber, under the same system of government. Drawing apart, they will 
assuredly become antagonistic. An opposite theory can be maintained, 
and will work with more or less friction where the white greatly domin- 
ates, and the black element is a negligible quantity ; when, however, the 
black predominates, the theory breaks down, and some practical solu- 
tion is reached not in conformity with it. As Hamlet was led to observe 
in a quite different connection —‘This was sometime a paradox, but now 
the time gives it proof.’ 

“What, then, is to be our American outcome? The negro squats at 
our hearthstone; we can neither assimilate nor expel him. The situation 
in Egypt is comparatively simple. The country will be developed by 
European money and brain; and the African will find his natural place 
in the outcome. Facts will be recognized, and a polity adopted in har- 
mony with them. Will the results reached there react on us in Amer- 
ica?—-Who now can say? The problem is intricate. Meanwhile one 
thing is clear :—the work done by those who were in political control 
at the close of our Civil War was done in utter ignorance of ethnologic 
law and total disregard of unalterable fact. Starting the movement 
wrong, it will be yet productive of incalculable injury to us. The Negro, 
after emancipation, should have been dealt with, not as a political equal, 
much less forced into a position of superiority; he should have been 
treated as a ward and dependent,—firmly, but in a spirit of kindness and 
absolute justice. Practically impossible as a policy then, this is not less 
so now. At best, it is something which can only be slowly and tenta- 
tively approximated. Nevertheless, it is not easy for one at all observ- 
ant to come back from Egypt and the Soudan without a strong suspicion 
that we will in America make small progress towards a solution of our 
race problem until we approach it in less of a theoretic and humanita- 
rian, and more of a scientific, spirit. Equality results not from law, but 
exists because things are in essentials like; and a political system which 
works admirably when applied to homogeneous equals results only in 
chaos when generalized into a nostrum to be administered universally. 
It has been markedly so of late with us.” 7 

"Adams, “Light Reflected from Africa,” Century Magazine, Vol. 72, p. 106. 


CHAPTER 63 
WHITE SUPREMACY AS A SOLUTION 


Unwillingness of the Caucasian to Divide Responsibility with Another Race in 
the Same Territory—The Caucasian’s Strong Sense of Consciousness of 
Kind and Strong Sense of Property Rights—Theory of Carlyle That the 
Right to Hold and Control Any Territory Belongs to the Race Best Fitted 
to Use It-—Superior Claims of the Caucasian to Territory in America 


INCE civil equality between the Negro and Caucasian seems to be 

impossible of realization, a great many white people in the United 
States think that the only solution of the Negro problem is white su- 
premacy, and that we should guarantee this by suitable franchise laws, 
or, if necessary, by removing the obstructions to it in our Constitution. 

Among the white people of the United States there is a wide-spread 
feeling that this is a white man’s country. In the South and in the 
Pacific Coast states this feeling is especially strong. It is not at all sur- 
prising, therefore, that a considerable number of people think that the 
solution of the race problem is white supremacy. 

This proposed solution seems on the surface to be entirely feasible, 
for the reason that :t is in agreement with historical facts. White su- 
premacy seems to have prevailed in all parts of the world where the 
white race has settled and planted its culture, except in Haiti, where 
the white race has been exterminated by the Negro. Wherever the 
white race has taken root upon any soil it does not yield to the supre- 
macy of any other race, and will resist to the point of total extinction 
rather than suffer any other race to domineer over it. 

It may be said in criticism of this trait of the white race that it is a 
relic of barbarism which should be eliminated by the progress of civil- 
ization, but calling it names does not alter the fact. The Caucasian 
race, and the Nordic branch of it in particular, will not submit to the 
control of any other race in a territory which it has purchased by its en- 
terprise and sacrifice of life; and in any discussion of the race problem 
it is necessary to reckon with this fact if we would arrive at any work- 
able procedure. 

There are two reasons why the white race will not divide responsi- 
bility with other races in the control of any territory. The first is a con- 

493 


494 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


sciousness of kind which disinclines it to commingle with a race of un- 
like kind, and the other is a highly developed sense of property rights. 
The white race has gone through a long economic evolution during 
which the occupation of definite territory and the private ownership of 
land have been the basis of its existence. The lands which it has re- 
claimed from forest and swamp, and from wild beasts and wild men, 
have been gained at the cost of many sacrificed lives and much strenu- 
ous work. The Romans were so jealous of their land boundaries that 
they had a god, Terminus, especially to guard and protect them. They 
set up stones to mark the limits of each estate, and woe to the man who 
should encroach upon another’s possessions! If he so much as touched 
a boundary stone with his plow, éven accidentally, the god would strike 
him dead. The white races of Northern Europe, who have founded 
homes in the clearings of the great northern forest, have developed a 
jealousy of property even more intense than that of the races of South- 
ern Europe. This property sense has come down to our modern nations 
with an increasing and expanding growth. A sacred regard for private 
and public property has been and is now a fundamental and ineradicable 
trait of the white men of western civilization. 

When the white men of Europe had the daring and hardihood to 
sail the seas and found settlements in the New World, they developed 
an intensified sense of both private and public property. Having gained 
a bit of territory at the expense of much labor and suffering they felt 
that they had an inalienable right to it, and they were ready to defend 
it with the last drop of their blood. 

The right of a people to any territory implies, of course, the right 
to rule over it, and in conceiving of this right, the white men always had 
in mind, as partners entitled to share in it, the members of their own 
race only. With this idea of ownership the New World was every- 
where explored and settled by the white men. In no colony of America 
was a government set up by the white men with any idea of ever includ- 
ing Indians or Negroes as its citizens. After the adoption of our Con- 
stitution the Negroes in several states acquired the privilege of suffrage 
through fulfilling the qualifications prescribed for and intended to apply 
only to whites. But, when it was discovered that Negroes could qualify 
for citizenship, special laws were made to exclude them in nearly all of 
the states. In 1860 the Negro could vote only in five New England 
States and under special restriction in New York. Not only was suf- 
frage denied the Negro, but in several states laws were made to prohibit 
Negro immigration. 


WHITE SUPREMACY AS A SOLUTION 495 


The Reconstruction régime in the South made clear the fact that the 
white people of that region would suffer extermination rather than en- 
dure Negro rule, and in this respect the Southern people do not differ 
in the least from the Caucasians in other parts of the world. In Haiti, 
where the fanatics of the French Revolution decreed the supremacy of 
the Negro, and sent an army of 5,000 men there to enforce it, 
the whites, though hopelesly in the minority, fought with a courage and 
desperation unsurpassed in history, and continued to fight until thev 
were practically exterminated. In the Hawaiian Islands the Caucas- 
ian element, consisting chiefly of the descendants of New England, suc- 
ceeded in wresting the government from the native inhabitants, and our 
national government then took the islands under its wing, and now pre- 
serves white supremacy there in spite of the numerical preponderance of 
the natives and the Mongolians. In California the white people would 
no more submit to the rule of the Japanese than the Southern peonle 
would submit to the rule of the Negro. And the people of New England 
would be as determined for white supremacy as the people of the South 
if similarly menaced. I think it is as well settled as anything can be that 
the people of no state in the Union would submit to be ruled by the 
Negro, Mongolian, or other unassimilable race, nor would the people as 
a whole look on such a rule with indifference. 

In combating the doctrine of white supremacy it is often alleged 
that this is as much the Negro’s country as it is the white man’s. 
Hasn’t the Negro been here several centuries, and hasn’t he labored 
and suffered to make it what it is? This same question was asked in 
reference to the Negroes of the West Indies, and it was answered, from 
the white man’s point of view by Thomas Carlyle. The people who 
can make the best use of a piece of this planet, argues Carlyle, have a 
right to it. In the West Indies pumpkins grow in great abundance, and 
the natives have sat there idle, up to their ears in pumpkins. The 
I¢nglish came along and made the island bear the fruits which the gods 
intended them to bear, and also prepared the soil to produce a nobler 
type of man and woman. It is not a question as to who came first, 
but who came with the gift of converting jungle into civilization.1 This 
is the line of argument that the white race employs for its justification 
for dominance in any territory which it has redeemed from savagery. 

In Africa, in India, and in the East and West Indies, where the 
white races have planted their culture, they provide for white suprem- 
acy by a colonial policy which limits the suffrage of the natives and 


* Essay, “The Nigger Question.” 


496 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


also their representation in the local assemblies and councils. And, 
since the United States has come to be a nation with outlying colonies, 
we also have had to adopt the same policy. In the Philippines, in 
Porto Rico, in Hawaii, and in the Danish West India Islands which we 
recently purchased, we have safeguarded white supremacy by limiting 
the voting and legislative power of the natives. 

As a result of the Civil War and the radical domination of Con- 
gress following it, our Constitution was amended with a view to pre- 
venting the Southern states from disfranchising the Negro. It was 
decreed that there should be no limitation of suffrage on the basis 
of color. The enactment of these amendments made it necessary for 
the white people of the South to maintain their supremacy by resort 
to intimidation, ballot jugglery, and forcible exclusion of the Negro 
from the polls. The use of such methods, however, was so humiliating 
to the Southern people, and so conducive to social disorder, that the 
wiser of their leaders sought to accomplish their object by enacting 
franchise laws with provisions which would exclude the great mass of 
Negroes on other grounds than color or race. Such franchise laws were 
enacted in nearly every Southern state, and were sustained by the 
Supreme Court of the United States; so that now white supremacy is 
maintained in the South by due process of law. It would be a mon- 
strous solecism if, under our Constitution, white supremacy could be 
provided for in our colonies and not in our states. 

But, while white supremacy in the United States is an unalterable 
fact, it does not follow that such supremacy is a solution of the Negro 
problem or the Mongolian problem. Another unalterable fact is that 
the Negroes are here to the extent of 10,000,000, and, however much 
the whites may dominate, there will always be a question as to how far 
the Negroes may approach the whites in civil privileges. 

Tfowever necessary and inevitable white supremacy may be, it does 
not follow that the exclusion of the Negro from participation in politi- 
cal activities is good either for the Negro or for the white man. As 
matters now stand, the Negro, whether in the South or in the North, 
has an active and effective part in politics only by depositing a ticket 
in the ballot box. He rarely holds office, and more rarely is a factor 
in party organization, primaries, stump-speaking, and the formulation 
of policies. 

It is possible to give to the Negro all of the political activities 
and thrills which are enjoyed by the white men without in the least 
jeopardizing white supremacy. In each city and state the Negro pop- 


WHITE SUPREMACY AS A SOLUTION 497 


ulation might be divided into districts, and each district be allowed to 
elect so many Negro representatives to the city council and state 
legislature. In New Zealand the native population is allowed represen- 
tation in this manner, 

The Negroes, to the extent that they vote at all, will certainly al- 
ways vote solidly on a racial basis, and always will be a disturbing 
factor in party government and in local and national legislation. And, 
if white supremacy could forever eliminate the Negroes from influence 
in politics, it would still leave untouched the problem of the Negro 
as an economic and moral factor in our national life. 

I cannot, therefore, regard white supremacy as a solution of the 
Negro problem. We have had white supremacy everywhere in our 
country since its colonization by the white race, except during the pe- 
riod of Reconstruction in the South, and in the meantime the Negro 
problem has grown in magnitude and complexity. The great increase 
in the Negro population, and the rapid changes in our industrial life, 
have revealed the problem in new aspects, and called for new adjust- 
ments, demanding the highest wisdom of the men of both races. 


CHAPTER 64 
EDUCATION AS THE SOLUTION 


Argument That It Is Unjust to Place the Burden of Educating the Negro upon 
the South and That the National Government Should Help—Views of Ex- 
President Taft, Raymond Patterson, William H. H. Hart, and Others 


OME students of the Negro problem believe that the real solution 

of it is to be found only in education. Raymond Patterson, a 
Northern man, and author of The Negro and His Needs (1911), says: 
“Taking a consensus of opinion among those who are striving for the 
uplift of the Negro, we arrive at the belief that the most practicable 
method of solving the race problem is the method of education, of a 
kind adapted to the peculiar temperament and needs of the black race. 
Not only justice and humanity call for it, but expediency as well. 

“The South was never any too rich, as regards the mass of the 
white people; its wealth was always concentrated among the wealthy 
planter class. Even of that wealth it was despoiled by the war, its 
fields were desolated, its plantations ruined, its capital dissipated, and 
its young men made old before their time, through the hardships of 
soldiery. To-day the South is prosperous, but it has no reserve capi- 
tal of its own. In fact, it is just beginning to save. Its public funds 
are small; its tax levies are necessarily meager; its needs are great. 
It will take still a generation or two to make up the vast monetary 
losses of the Civil War. In the face of all this, it finds itself with a 
growing Negro population of many millions. To ask the South, un- 
aided, to educate these Negroes would be a cruel injustice; and indeed, 
it is impossible to believe that the few rich people in the South would 
tax themselves to attempt to educate millions upon millions of the 
blacks who were once their slaves. Any effort on the part of the 
government to saddle the education of the black mass upon the little 
white minority would mean surely bankruptcy, possibly rebellion. And 
the Negroes obviously cannot educate themselves; they are hopelessly 
poor and pitifully ignorant. It is plain that there is need for a move- 
ment on the part of the whole nation towards the uplift and education 

498 


EDUCATION AS THE SOLUTION 499 


of the Negro race.”* Mr. Patterson would have Congress apportion 
funds to the states on the basis of illiteracy. 

As for the kind of education needed by the Negro, Mr. Patterson 
favors the public common schools, side by side with manual training 
of the sort given at Hampton and Tuskegee. He says that the higher 
education of the Negro at the present time “seems like an attempt to 
put on the roof before the work is begun on the foundation.” He 
would abolish all but a few of the so-called Negro colleges and uni- 
versities.” 

Ex-President Taft has been very greatly interested in Negro edu- 
cation and he is president of the Hampton Institute board of trustees. 
In a bulletin of the Institute he makes the following statements: “The 
result has demonstrated that in the principles that Armstrong taught 
is to be found the solution of our race problem in this country. Here 
is to be found the explanation of the marvelous progress which the 
statistics show has been made by the negro race in the half century of 
‘up from slavery.’ Among the chief factors in this, so far as it repre- 
sents real progress of the negro, are to be counted Samuel C. Arm- 
strong, Hollis B. Frissell, and the greatest and most distinguished 
graduate of Hampton, the founder of Tuskegee, that great American, 
Dr. Booker T. Washington. 

“The Hampton of to-day in material growth is far beyond what 
Armstrong left it. There is a great plant on an inlet of Chesapeake 
Bay and there is a handsome endowment, not large enough for all the 
purposes of the institution, but one far beyond the dreams of the 
founder. 

“The influence of Hampton upon its students is one of the most 
striking instances of personal inspiration that the writer has ever seen. 
Each year a company of men and women deeply interested in the 
cause of negro education and uplift meet at Hampton’s commencement 
and drink into their souls the spirit that the atmosphere and the en- 
vironment and the attitude of the students and faculty give. 

“Hampton is a place for pessimists to visit that they may be cured 
of their unhappy state of mind. It is a place for materialists to go 
that their hearts may be opened and that they may be taught the value 
of unselfish help to others in securing happiness for the helper. It is a 
place for statesmen to visit in order that there may be revealed to them 
a way of creating citizens who shall strengthen a State. It is a place 


* Patterson, The Negro and His Needs, p. 197. 
*Tbid., p. 199. 


500 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


for him who would seek evidence of the great moral returns to this 
country from the sacrifices of the Civil War to find them at Hampton 
in palpable form. It is a place for the southern white man, anxious 
for the promotion of his section of the country, to go that he may 
realize, as so many of his fellows now do, how essential and how pos- 
sible it is to make his black fellow citizens of the fair South a source 
of profit, of peace, of law and order, and of general community hap- 
piness. 

“Upon the southern white man depends the solution of the race 
problem, and one of the hopeful signs is his growing interest in the 
method of solving it at Hampton and Tuskegee and the other great 
negro educational institutions of the South.” 

A. H. Merriam, another Northern man, also regards education as a 
proper solution of the Negro problem. 

“The interests at stake,’ says he, “are common to us all. The 
backlying cause of the trouble,—slavery and its accompaniments—was 
in a sense our common responsibility; we all ought to have united to 
get rid of it peaceably, and the North ought to have paid its share. 
For this dereliction the South has paid a terrible price. The North, 
too, suffered woefully, yet in far less measure. Would it not be the 
part of patriotism and statesmanship—of wisdom and good will—that 
all should now take some share in lifting the load which weighs heavi- 
est on the South, but hurts us all? ... The South is carrying more 
than its share of national expense, and without complaint. Our tariff 
system presses far heavier on the agricultural South than on the manu- 
facturing North. Of our payment of pensions, running up to $130,- 
000,000.00 a year,—the South bears its proportion, though it is paid 
to men for fighting against her, and the South makes no remonstrance. 
Is it not simple justice, is it not a matter of national conscience and 
honor, that the whole nation should help her in educating the future 
citizens of the republic?” 3 

William H. H. Hart, a quadroon lawyer and philanthropist of Wash- 
ington, D. C., agrees with the views of Merriam. ‘The great pity of 
it all,” remarks Hart, “is that the South has not the means to provide 
school facilities which shall approach in completeness those of the East 
and the great West. The war did two terrible things to the South. It 
exhausted its resources, and it destroyed its most promising manhood. 
Poverty retards progress, and poverty enforces and continues the il- 
literacy of the South. Senator Blair was the one statesman since Lin- 

* Merriam, The Negro and the Nation, p. 406. 


EDUCATION AS THE SOLUTION 501 


coln who proposed an adequate and certain means of relief which 
should put the South on an equal footing with the rest of the coun- 
te es aa 
“Our institutions demand the education of the masses, and the 
whole country must, in the nature of things, provide the common school 
for the great ignorant masses of the colored population in the South. 
It is unfair to expect the whites of the Southern States to bear the 
entire burden.” 4 


“Quoted by Patterson, op. cit., p. 172. 


CHAPTER 6s 
DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 


Interest in Social Equality and in Political Measures among Northern Negroes— 
Ideas of DuBois and Booker Washington Contrasted—Denunciation of 
Roosevelt and Harding by Northern Negroes for Their Remarks on the 
Race Problem—Evidence That the. Negroes Are Losing Ground Because of 
Their Radical Leadership 


N reference to nearly everything which concerns the welfare of 

their race, the Negroes of our country are divided into two op- 
posing camps. One group seeks the interest of their race through law 
enforcement, and the enactment of more legislation designed to pro- 
tect the Negroes against unfair discriminations, and its general atti- 
tude towards the whites, especially the Southern whites, is one of 
antagonism. The other seeks the interest of their race through the 
elevation of its economic, educational, and moral status, with the view 
of preparing it for the exercise of whatever rights and privileges be- 
long to free men. And this latter group, in all of its policies, seeks a 
better understanding and cooperation between the races. 

The Negroes of the first group are generally mulattoes who reside 
in the Northern states where there are relatively few pure Negroes. 
They do not feel at home with the blacks, and, unable to find a place 
among the whites, they have a constricted and unsatisfying social life 
which causes them to feel isolated, lonely, and sometimes bitter. Being 
generally better educated than the mass of Negroes, they all aspire to 
leadership, but there are few careers open to them in the line of service 
to their own race, owing to the smallness of the Negro population. 
They find their most inviting field in politics or in journalism. The 
business of corralling the Negro vote is a fascinating one, and offers 
prospects of appointment to a job under the national government, or 
some city government. As editors of newspapers, they all aspire to be 
spokesman for the mass of Negroes in both sections of our country. 
But they are handicapped as leaders by lack of contact and familiarity 
with the darker mass of their race, and they are apt to emphasize phases 
of the Negro problem which are of particular interest to the mulatto 

502 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 503 





only. The question they are more interested in than any other is that 
of social equality, and their main efforts are directed to the abolition 
of all laws or arrangements which would prevent the free intermixture 
of the whites and blacks in schools, vehicles of transportation, hotels, 
restaurants, theaters, parks, etcetera, and to building up a public senti- 
ment which would do away with every form of discrimination on ac- 
count of color. They assume that the Negro is equal to the white 
man, and that whatever interferes with the free intermingling of the 
two races is merely the result of narrow prejudice. They look with 
disfavor on any author who makes a plea for any kind of racial in- 
tegrity. A recent reviewer in the Journal of Negro History refers 
to “the idea of racial integrity” as “‘the fundamental cause of race 
hatexn? 

The other group of Negroes are residents of the Southern states 
in which there are large masses of their race. The leaders among them 
are largely mulattoes, but include also a number of men of rather dark 
complexion. The Southern mulattoes generally find a satisfying social 
life among their own people, and consequently have no craving for 
social intermixture with the whites. They care nothing for what is 
called “social equality,” and do not understand why anybody wants 
to discuss it. They know intimately the characteristics and conditions 
of the mass of their people, and they realize that the greatest need 
of the race is a rise in its level of culture through advancement in in- 
dustry, education, and morals. 

They are decidedly interested in politics, and aggressive in their 
demands for justice before the law and in the courts, but they em- 
phasize duties and responsibilities, and economic and moral efficiency 
more than civil rights, and believe that the surest means of acquiring 
any right is by demonstrating one’s fitness to exercise it. The South- 
ern Negro leaders generally feel that the fate of the blacks and the 
whites is indissolubly bound together, and they therefore seek friendly 
relations and cooperation with the whites. 

The mulatto leaders of the North, knowing little of the Southern 
Negro and less of the Southern white man, do not understand why a 
Southern Negro can feel friendly toward the Southern white man. 
They therefore assume that the popularity of a Southern Negro leader 
among white people must be due to a truculent spirit, or to hypocritical 
diplomacy. One of the chief objections they raised against Booker 
Washington was his popularity with the Southern whites. He was ac- 

Sate 025) -p. 103: 


504. THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





cused of truckling to the whites, and of introducing into the North the 
Southern white man’s estimate of the Negro. Southern Negroes who 
have friends among Southern white people are stigmatized as “pussy- 
footers,” and “white folks’ niggers.” ° 

Charles Price, the forerunner of Booker Washington as a champion 
of industrial education for the Negroes, was a strong advocate of 
codperation between the races, and it is certain that he enjoyed the 
friendship and esteem of a large circle of the best white people. Wher- 
ever he lectured he had as many white people in his audiences as col- 
ored people. The fact is that it is quite impossible for any Negro 
educator, preacher, politician, or other kind of leader in the South, 
to amount to anything without having a large circle of admirers and 
loyal friends among the whites. The Southern white people, whatever 
else may be said of them, are good sportsmen, and are ever ready to 
push forward and brag on any man who has won success in any line 
of usefulness, in spite of political differences. It is therefore quite im- 
possible for a Southern Negro to attain to any worthy distinction 
without having friends among the whites, and it is natural for him 
to feel kindly toward the whites, and very unnatural for him to feel 
animosity toward them. Booker Washington, like all preceding South- 
ern Negroes who have attained to distinction, grew up with many ties 
binding him in sympathy to the white people, and he aspired to merit 
their good will, friendship, and cooperation. Moreover, Booker Wash- 
ington was a man of such broad sympathy and outlook, and of such 
fine spirit, that it would have been impossible for him to feel hatred 
toward his white neighbor. 

Dr. Moton, the successor of Booker Washington as principal of 
Tuskegee and as leader of the Southern Negroes, is naturally very 
popular with Southern white people because of his high character 
and achievements. And having grown up among the whites, he 
knows them, and finds them in many ways helpful to him. He there- 
fore has no disposition to hate them, but reciprocates their good will, 
and realizes, as Booker Washington did, the advantages of their 
support. 

The following article from the Broad Axe of Chicago, April 2, 
1921, illustrates the difference of attitude between the Northern and 
Southern Negro toward the white people: “It is nauseating to read 
the rot given out by R. R. Moton, principal of Tuskegee, as he travels 


* Ferris, The African Abroad, Vol. I, p. 184. 
* Crisis, Vol. 5, p. 21. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 505 
through the South in jim-crow cars, stopping now and then to make 
speeches lauding his oppressors. If he were the only one to suffer it 
would matter little, but his words are promptly telegraphed all over 
the country, and every time he opens his mouth the colored people 
sink lower in the minds of those who read. Many of his statements 
are wholly without foundation in fact. 

“For instance in a recent lecture before the students of the Uni- 
versity of North Carolina, the wires say he said: “The Negro race has 
advanced further than any similar number of colored people anywhere 
on the globe because it has the privilege of coming in contact with the 
white people of the South.’ Could anything with a smaller amount of 
truth and a greater amount of servility be compressed into one sen- 
tence? 

“The census of Brazil shows that there are about 22,000,000 people 
with more or less Negro blood in that country, or nearly twice as many 
as there are in the United States, according to census figures. And the 
colored people of Brazil, although they were once slaves, and were not 
emancipated until 1888, a quarter of a century after Lincoin’s procla- 
mation, have advanced further than the colored people in this country, 
because they have reached the point where color does not count. They 
are absolutely free from any social or civil discrimination. The color 
line does not exist in Brazil, and the blackest Brazillian is in every way 
the peer of the whitest of his countrymen. 

“Principal Moton deems it a wonderful thing that his race ‘has 
had the privilege of coming into contact with the white people of the 
South.’ Here are some of the benefits of the contact: Two hundred 
and fifty years of slavery; enactment of the infamous Black Codes to 
retain slavery, in fact, after its abolition; segregation; denial of living 
wages; denial of equal school facilities; disfranchisement; jim-crow 
cars, etcetera. Why even Tuskegee Institute which furnishes Prin- 
cipal Moton his bread and butter is the gift of the North. Northern 
people have given 95 percent of the endowment fund, and the greater 
portion of the running expenses is begged in the North. The State of 
Alabama gives the measly sum of about $3,000. 

“Here is another gem from Principal Moton: ‘To the Southern 
white people we owe our language and our religion, and all that we 
have learned and all that we have advanced in civilization.’ Think of 
a man who would say such things being the head of an institution which 
trains the youths. Is it strange that many of the students come out 
imbued with distorted ideas of their proper place in the world? 


506 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


“Then Principal Moton came out in his peroration in which he 
said that ‘no Southern colored man wanted social equality.’ In that 
statement he showed his ignorance of the English language. He prob- 
ably meant to say that the colored people were not seeking matrimonial 
alliances with white people. Principal Moton may not wish social 
equality, but there are millions of colored people who desire it. 

“For a colored man to laud the brutal South, which has heaped un- 
speakable wrongs upon his people for hundreds of years, is a disgusting 
exhibition of servility.” 

W. E. B. DuBois believes that the solution of the Negro problem 
can be brought about only by according to the Negro all the political 
and social privileges accorded to the whites, and, so far as education is 
a factor in the problem, he believes that the first step is to develop, 
through higher institutions of learning, an intellectual aristocracy among 
his people. “The Negro race,’ he says, “like all races, is going to be 
saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among 
Negroes, must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth: it is the prob- 
lem of developing the best of their race that they may guide the mass 
away from the contamination and death of the worst, in their own and 
Diller Tacesou. wal, 

“If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop 
money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the 
object of education we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. 
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work 
of the schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world 
that was and is, and of the relation of men to it—this is the curriculum 
of that Higher [Education which must underlie true life. On this 
foundation we may build bread-winning, skill of hand and quickness of 
brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of 
living for the object of life... .* 

“Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more 
quickly raised than by the effort and example of their aristocracy of 
talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth 
civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever 
will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented 
Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage 
ground. This is the history of human progress; and the two historic 
mistakes which have hindered that progress were the thinking first that 

*The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, p. 34. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 507 


no more could ever rise save the few already risen; or second, that it 
would better the unrisen to pull the risen down.® 

“T would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount 
necessity of teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and 
skillfully; or seem to depreciate in the slightest degree the important 
part industrial schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, 
but I do say and insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with its 
vision of success to imagine that its work can be accomplished without 
providing for the training of broadly cultured men, and women to 
teach its own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public 
schools; Mi4.:4.9 

“Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone 
will not do it unless inspired by right ideals and guided by intelligence. 
Education must not simply teach work—it must teach Life. The Tal- 
ented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and 
missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this 
work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, 
like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.” 7 

Charles W. Chesnutt, like DuBois, emphasizes political action and 
believes that everything is subordinate to the Negro’s obtaining full civil 
rights: “Nations do not at first become rich and learned and then 
free, but the lesson of history has been that they first become free and 
then rich and learned, and often times fall back into slavery again be- 
cause of too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of 
civic virtues. The process of education has been going on rapidly in 
the Southern States since the Civil War, and yet, if we take superficial 
indications, the rights of the Negroes are at a lower ebb than at any 
time during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race preju- 
dice more intense and uncompromising.” § 

Mr. Chesnutt might be interested to know that a philosophy exactly 
opposite to his was once held by no less a person than Victor Hugo. 
In reference to an incendiary who had set fire to a library, Hugo ex- 
claimed: “A crime committed by yourself against yourself, infamous 
creature . . . for knowledge comes first to man, then comes liberty.” ® 


° The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, p. 45. 
*Tbid., p. 61. 

*Tbid., p. 75. 

*Tbid.. p. 104. 

*See poem, “Whose is the Fault.” 


508 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





The great mass of Negro politicians and editors of papers follow 
the lead of DuBois, Chesnutt, and other Negroes of a radical type. 

What Booker T. Washington thought as to the solution of the 
Negro problem may be summed up in the following extracts from his 
writings: ‘“Scarcely a week or a month goes by that I do not find on 
my desk a letter, a pamphlet, or a book in which some one has tried to 
formulate a solution of the race problem. Many of these letters and 
pamphlets contain valuable suggestions, and, so far as I am able to do 
so, I read them all, read them with interest and, I hope, with profit. 
As a rule, however, it seems to me that these solutions have one com- 
mon fault. They start out apparently with the notion that the Negro 
is a fixed quantity, always and everywhere the same, and then proceed 
as if the race problem, like a problem in arithmetic, could be solved 
once and for all by a mere process of reasoning, once you had defined 
all the terms. 

“The trouble in this case is that, like other human problems, the race 
problem is one in which the terms are not fixed and cannot, therefore, 
be brought into the shape of a hard and fast formula. 

“For my own part I have long ago given up the notion of solving 
the race problem wholesale. It seems to me rather that it can only 
be solved in detail. It is for this reason that I find myself interested in 
the progress of the individual Negro quite as much as I am interested 
in the progress of the general average. The colored man who breaks 
a record, who does something new and better in his particular line 
than any other colored man has done before, is not only widening the 
opportunities of the race, but he is encouraging others to follow in his 
steps. What one man has done another may do.” ?° 

“In my mind there is no doubt but that we made a mistake at the 
beginning of our freedom of putting the emphasis on the wrong end. 
Politics and the holding of office were too largely emphasized, almost 
to the exclusion of every other interest. 

“I believe the past and present teach but one lesson—to the Negro’s 
friends and to the Negro himself,—that there is but one way out, that 
there is but one hope of solution; and that is for the Negro in every 
part of America to resolve henceforth that he will throw aside every 
non-essential and cling only to the essential,—that his pillar of fire by 
night and pillar of cloud by day shall be property, economy, education, 
and Christian character. To us just now these are the wheat, all else 
the chaff. The individual or race that owns the property, pays the 

* “Solving the Negro Problem in Detail,” Independent, Mar. 27, 1912. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 509 
taxes, possesses the intelligence and substantial character, is the one 
which is going to exercise the greatest control in government, whether 
he lives in the North or whether he lives in the South.” ™ 

“T would teach the race that in industry the foundation must be 
Jaid—that the very best service which anyone can render to what is 
called the higher education is to teach the present generation to provide 
a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this will 
grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of property, 
bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical education, 
professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out of it will 
grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth from 
which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of 
literature and the fine arts.” 1° 

Booker Washington believed fully in higher learning for his race, 
but thought that the greater present need was practical education for the 
masses. He said: “I believe most earnestly that for years to come the 
education of the people of my race should be so directed that the 
greatest proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be 
brought to bear upon the everyday practical things of life, upon some- 
thing which they will be permitted to do in the community, in which 
they reside: 43 

“There is danger that a certain class of impatient extremists among 
the Negroes, who have little knowledge of the actual conditions in the 
South, may do the entire race injury by attempting to advise their breth- 
ren in the South to resort to armed resistance or the use of the torch, 
in order to secure justice. All intelligent and well-considered discus- 
sion of any important question or condemnation of any wrong, both 
in the North and the South, from public platform and through the 
press, is to be commended and encouraged; but ill-considered, incendi- 
ary utterances from black men in the North will tend to add to the 
burdens of our people in the South rather than relieve them.” "4 

Dr. R. R. Moton, the successor to Washington at Tuskegee, holds 
that the Negro problem is one for the Negro himself to solve by lifting 
himself to a higher level of culture, and is fundamentally a moral one. 

“Whatever question there may be about the white man’s part in 
this situation, there is no doubt about ours. Don’t let us delude our- 


"The Future of the American Negro, p. 132. 

“The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, New York, 1903, p. 18. 
Ot. Dil. 

“The Future of the American Negro, p. 206. 


510 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





selves but keep in mind the fact that the man who owns his home and 
cultivates his land and lives a decent, self-respecting, useful, and help- 
ful life is no problem anywhere. We talk about the ‘color line,’ but 
you know and I know that the blackest Negro in Alabama or Mis- 
sissippi or Africa or anywhere else who puts the same amount of skill 
and energy into his farming gets as large returns for his labor as the 
whitest Anglo-Saxon. The earth yields up her increase as willingly 
to the skill and persuasions of the black as to the white husbandman. 
Wind, wave, heat, steam, and electricity are absolutely blind forces, 
and see no race distinction and draw no ‘color line.’ The world’s 
market does not care and asks no.question about the shade of the hand 
that produces the commodity, but it does insist that it shall be up to 
the world’s requirements. 

“I thank God for the excellent chance to work that my race 
had in this Southern country; the Negro in America has a real, good, 
healthy job, and I hope he may always keep it. I am not particular 
what he does, or where he does it, so he is engaged in honest, useful, 
Works"), 

“The race problem in this country, I repeat, is simply a part of 
the problem of life. It is the adjustment of man’s relation to his 
brother, and this adjustment began when Cain slew Abel. Race pre- 
judice is as much a fact as the law of gravitation, and it is as foolish to 
ignore the operation of one as of the other. Mournful complaint and 
arrogant criticism are as useless as the crying of a babe against the 
fury of a great wind. The path of moral progress, remember, has 
never taken a straight line, but I believe that unless Democracy is a 
failure and Christianity a mockery, it is entirely feasible and practicable 
for the black and white races of America to develop side by side, in 
peace, in harmony, and in mutual helpfulness each toward the other ; 
living together as ‘brothers in Christ without being brothers-in-law,’ 
each making its contributions to the wealth arid culture of our beloved 
country.” 15 

Paul Laurence Dunbar offered no special recipe for the uplift of 
the Negro race, but believed that the conditions underlying the ad- 
vancement of the Negro “are the same that account for the advancement 
of men of any other race: preparation, perseverance, bravery, patience, 
honesty and the power to seize the opportunity.” 7° 


* Address delivered at Tuskegee, May, 1902, printed in Dunbar, Masterpieces 
of Negro Eloquence, p. 367. 
** The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, p. 209. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 511 





He differs from most other Negro authors in laying little emphasis 
upon political propaganda, and he was not an admirer of the Negro 
politician. “The street corner politician,’ he says, ‘“who through ques- 
tionable methods or even through skillful manipulation, succeeds in 
securing the janitorship of the Court House, may be written up in the 
local papers as representative, but is he? . . . The rabid agitator who 
goes about the land preaching the independence and glory of his race, 
and by his very mouthings retarding both, saintly missionary, whose 
only mission is, like that of ‘Pooh Bah!’ to be insulted; the man of the 
cloth who thunders against the sins of the world and from whom honest 
women draw away their skirts, the man, who talks temperance and 
tipples high-balls—these are not representative, and whatever their 
station in life, they should be rated at their proper value, for there is 
a difference between attainment and achievement. 

“Under the pure light of reason, the ignorant carpet-bagger judge is 
a person and not a personality. The illiterate and inefficient black man, 
whom circumstance put into Congress, was a representative but was not 
representative.” *” 

“To have achieved something for the betterment of his race rather 
than for the aggrandizement of himself, seems to be a man’s best title 
to be called representative.” 1° 

Dunbar goes on to say “that for the last forty years the most help- 
ful men of the race have come from the ranks of its teachers, and few 
of those who have finally done any big thing, but have at some time or 
other held the scepter of authority in a school.” ?® 

He gives high praise to Booker Washington, W. H. Council of the 
Normal School of Alabama, R. R. Wright of the State College of 
Georgia, Kelly Miller of Howard University, and W. E. B. DuBois of 
Atlanta University. He also points with pride to Negroes who have 
achieved distinction in art, and he believes that it will be through indi- 
vidual achievements of something “definite and concrete” that ‘the 
race problem will gradually solve itself.” 7° 

Booker Washington, in his celebrated Atlanta speech in 1895, ex- 
pressed the point of view of the Southern Negro when he said, “In all 
things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the 
hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” At this time Booker 


“The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, p. 192. 
* Tbid., p. 180. 
™ Ibid., p. 200. 
® Ibid., p. 206. 


512 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

ee pai UU ES ie nhc lel ia ee ee ea 
Washington was at the head of an industrial school for Negroes in 
Tuskegee, Alabama, and his address was a plea for more general indus- 
trial education for his race ; his remark about social separation of the two 
races was only incidental. The practical philosophy of the address, 
and its incisive and forceful style, as well as its fine spirit, made an 
electrical impression on his audience, and Booker Washington was at 
one bound a famous man. 

The part of his address referring to social separateness, however, 
did not meet the approval of mulattoes in the North. They regarded 
Booker Washington’s figure of speech as a compromise, and in all of 
their references to his Atlanta address they still call it the “Atlanta 
Compromise.” The Northern mulattoes, because they cannot associate 
with the whites, and do not want to associate with the blacks, are hyper- 
sensitive on the subject of social opportunities and privileges. The 
different points of view of the Northern and Southern Negroes in ref- 
erence to social equality are brought out in their attitude toward an 
address delivered by President Harding at Birmingham, Alabama, 
October 26, 1921. 

The President began his speech with a quotation from an article in 
the Edinburgh Review by F. D. Lugard as follows: “Here, then, is 
the true conception of the interrelation of color—complete uniformity 
in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of knowledge and culture, equal 
opportunity for those who strive, equal admiration for those who 
achieve ; in matters social and racial a separate path, each pursuing his 
own inherited traditions, preserving his own purity and race pride; 
equality in things spiritual, agreed divergence in the physical and 
marital.” 

Concerning this statement of Mr. Lugard’s the President said: 
“Here, it has seemed to me, is the suggestion of the true way out. 
Politically and economically there need be no occasion for great and 
permanent differentiation, for limitations of the individual’s opportunity, 
provided that on both sides there shall be recognition of the absolute 
divergence in things social and racial. When I suggest the possibility 
of economic equality between the races, I mean it in precisely the same 
way and to the same extent that I would mean it if I spoke of equality 
of economic opportunity as between members of the same race. In each 
case I would mean equality proportioned to the honest capacities and 
deserts of the individual.” 


The President could not have said anything more in line with the 
views of Booker Washington. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 513 


Dr. R. R. Moton, in an article in the Outlook, November 9, 1921, 
commending very highly the President’s address, said: “The President 
has proposed a platform upon which black and white, North and South, 
can stand without sacrifice, on the one hand, of any traditions of the 
white race, and, on the other, without sacrifice, of any fundamental 
rights of the Negro as an American citizen. 

“Furthermore, the President has asked for the Negro nothing more 
than what leading men of both races in the South are asking, and we 
are grateful to him for having delivered the address in the South where 
the problem is most acute. Huis address comes at the opportune time 
when not only the leading white people of the South, but the average 
white person as well, are more determined than ever before that the 
Negro shall have an equal chance with other Americans,” 

The Southern Negro leaders and the rank and file of Southern 
colored people, were highly pleased with the President’s speech. But 
the Negro leaders in the North were thrown into a rage by its utterance 
on the social question. For example, William A. St. Clair, writing to 
the Guardian, a Negro paper of Boston, said: “The speech delivered 
by President Harding in Birmingham, Alabama, yesterday is fraught 
with the most dangerous, pernicious, destructive and hell-born doctrines 
that have ever been uttered in the fifty years of our development, not 
only by a president of the United States, but by any responsible Cabi- 
net Minister. 

“The colored race cannot afford to ignore these utterances; un- 
questionably great harm has already been done our race as indicated by 
remarks made by some white people in my hearing, and incalculable in- 
jury to our race will certainly follow. 

“President Harding exploits in Birmingham, in the heart of the 
South, and in the very toils of the serpent of racial prejudice, the doc- 
trines of amalgamation, social equality and the question of the Colored 
ballot; and as I see it, simply to gain the favor of those whites in the 
South who have been the oppressors of our race, and who have used 
their every power to destroy us as American citizens.” 

Even Theodore Roosevelt, while he was President, came in for 
severe denunciation from the Northern mulattoes on account of his 
utterances on the race problem before a Southern audience. He was 
held up as turning traitor to the Negroes because he emphasized the 
Negroes’ duties more than their rights in a speech to colored people at 
Jacksonville, Florida, in 1905. He said: “It seems to me that it is 
true of all of us that our duties are even more important than our 


514 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


rights. If we do our duties faithfully in spite of the difficulties that 
come, then sooner or later the rights will take care of themselves.” 4 

The chief factor in the opposition to Booker Washington arose from 
the jealousy of the Northern mulattoes. The meteoric appearance of 
Booker Washington among the luminaries of the race excited the envy 
of the Northern Negroes, and they set themselves to work very dili- 
gently to undermine his hold upon the great mass of his race, and also 
upon the white people, North and South. The opposition to Washington 
was started by DuBois who objected that Washington’s educational 
policy underrated the value of institutions of learning of the classical 
type. This was followed by criticisms of a less rational and more cap- 
tious nature from other leading Negroes. | 

The initial onslaught upon Booker Washington was made by George 
Washington Forbes of Boston, who is described by a Negro author as 
“endowed with the generalship of Napoleon, George Washington, Abra- 
ham Lincoln, U. S. Grant, Count Von Moltke, and James G. Blaine.” ?? 
During his several years of editorship of the Guardian “he mapped out 
the campaign against Booker T. Washington.” 7? Forbes had the sup- 
port of the Northern mulattoes, and he lost no opportunity to belittle, 
misrepresent, and antagonize every move or utterance which Washington 
made. Booker Washington was charged with responsibility for the 
disfranchisement laws in the South, for the extension of the jim-crow 
laws, for lynchings, and for every handicap to which the race was 
subjected. It was alleged that “he ridiculed the higher aspirations of 
his own people, and asked his own people to cease contending for man- 
hood rights,” ?* that he built up a “colored political and educational 
machine,” that he used money to bolster up his partners’ newspapers, 
that he sought to exclude men not of his party from securing any edu- 
cational, political, ecclesiastical, or editorial jobs, or from securing 
financial support for their institutions, that he “showered his favors 
upon the mediocre men in the Negro race, and attempted to starve the 
powerful men into submission.” 75 

The Negro author, Ferris, speaking of the crystallization of opposi- 
tion to Washington, says: ‘Then, Hon. John E. Milholland, Editor 
Oswald Garrison Villard, Miss Mary White Ovington, author of that 


* Quoted from the Springfield Republican. 

™ Ferris, The African Abroad, Vol. 1, p. 915. 
* Tbid., Vol. 1, p. 915. 

*4 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 184. 

e FOtds, VO 2, 4 O13. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW SIs 


splendid monograph, ‘Half a Man,’ Mr. William Walling, Hon. Moor- 
field Story, Hon. A. E. Pillsbury, and other prominent men and women 
of both races, organized the Society for the Advancement of Colored 
People ; elected Hon. Moorfield Storey as President; selected DuBois as 
secretary, with headquarters in New York City; and interested such 
public spirited citizens as Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Dr. Newell Dwight 
Hillis, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Mr. Jacob S. Schiff, Mr. Henry 
Morgenthau, and Prof. Spingarn in it; then DuBois forged ahead of 
Washington, and became the recognized spokesman for his race.” 7° 
The organization of the N.A.A.C.P. definitely divided the Ne- 
groes of the United States into two opposing schools of thought. The 
one, composed mostly of Northern mulattoes, emphasized political ac- 
tion, and, because of its general indictment of the whites (the Southern 
whites in particular), and its violent and braggadocio spirit, was called 
the militant school. The program of the N.A.A.C.P. for 1921 relates 
entirely to political lines of action, and is as follows: 
“1, Anti-Lynching legislation by Congress 
2. Abolition of Segregation in the Departments at Washington 
3. Enfranchisement of the Negro or reduction of southern repre- 
sentation, if necessary 
4. Restoration of Haitian independence and reparation, as far as 
possible, for wrongs committed there by the American administration, 
through Congressional investigation of both military and civil acts of 
the American Occupation 
5. Presentation to the new President of a mammoth petition of 
say, 100,000 bona fide signers, collected by the various branches, re- 
questing the pardon of the soldiers of the 24th Infantry imprisoned at 
Leavenworth on the charge of rioting at Houston, Texas 
6. The abolition of jim-crow cars in interstate traffic 
7. Treatment of colored men in the Navy; where once many ratings 
as non-commissioned officers were held by Negroes, now colored men 
can enlist only as mess boys, in other words, as servants 
8. Appointment of a National Inter-Racial Commission to make an 
earnest study of race conditions and race relations in the United States 
g. Appointment of colored assistant secretaries in the Labor and 
‘Agricultural Departments which would give the Negro official represen- 
tation in the two phases of national life where he needs most and suf- 
fers most 
Io. Continuance of the fight in the Arkansas cases.” 
* Ferris, op. cit., Vol, 2, p. 912, 


516 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





Albeit that some of the above proposed measures are meritorious, 
the program as a whole has several serious faults. In the first place, 
it is a revival of the spirit and policy which characterized the radical 
carpet-bag régime of Reconstruction days in the South, and, if the 
program were carried out, it would result in another régime of Negro 
rule, with all of such a régime’s evil consequences to both races. And 
it has the same fault as the carpet-bag leadership in concentrating the 
interest of the Negro upon political activities. It leaves out of sight 
entirely any constructive policy designed to meet the practical needs 
of the race, such as a better laying hold of the obvious economic oppor- 
tunities now available and fast slipping away, the elevation of the 
domestic life of the race, and measures for bringing about a higher 
mental and moral efficiency. It tends too much to throw the burden of 
the Negro’s problems upon political action by the whites, and to incul- 
cate race dependency instead of race self-help. 

Another fault of the program is that it asks for political appoint- 
ments in the department at Washington on the basis of race. If the 
Germans, Irish, Poles, Jews, Italians, and other races, would also 
clamor for racial representation, we would arrive at a state of things 
worse than the spoils system. To be sure, the Negro, like every other 
race, ought to be considered in making political appointments in so far 
as it furnishes men preéminently fitted for the jobs, but it is un-Ameri- 
can, and certainly a very unpopular policy, for any race to organize and 
demand political patronage. 

The Association for the Advancement of the Colored People has an 
official organ, the Crisis, and it sends out lecturers all over the country 
to agitate in favor of its program. ‘The three subjects which are most 
vehemently stressed are lynching, jim-crow laws, and the reénfran- 
chisement of the Negro. The Association assumes that the exercise of 
the franchise is a natural right, and seeks to abolish the franchise re- 
strictions in the South, and to restore the government of those states to 
the status of the Reconstruction era. The absence of any condemnation 
of rape or other crime, or any concern for the diminution of Negro 
crime, is conspicuous. Race segregation in schools, even where the 
Negroes of the locality have expressed a preference for it, is denounced 
as race apostasy. 

The chief exponent of the radical Negro point of view is William 
Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian. He would have the 
North take up arms again, and punish the South for its position on the 
Negro question, and he is ever ready to hurl epithets, even at a North- 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 517 


ern white man, who does not go the full length in championing the cause 
of the Negro in every issue that arises. For instance, he denounced 
Roosevelt for his discharge of the Negro soldiers connected with the 
Brownsville riot. The egoism of Trotter is so crass that he cannot bear 
the least rivalry in his self-assumed role of Negro leadership. Hence 
Booker Washington was to him like a red rag to a bull, and was de- 
nounced as a traitor to his race. Some years ago, when Washington 
went to Boston to address a colored audience in Zion Church, “Trotter 
and his friends scattered cayenne pepper on the rostrum, and created 
a disturbance which broke up the meeting.” *’ But, although Trotter 
was jailed for this offense, he was not in the least ashamed of it, but 
regarded it as a splendid exhibition of Negro heroism. 

Trotter’s newspaper, and others of like kind throughout the North, 
keep up an incessant tirade against what they call race prejudice in 
total obliviousness to the fact that they exhibit more of it than any 
other class in America. If any Southern white editor should carry on 
a campaign of abuse of the Negro half so full of narrowness, male- 
volence, and ignorant prejudice as is characteristic of a large section 
of the Northern Negro press, he would be universally condemned by 
the Southern sentiment. The Trotter type of newspaper is blind to the 
fact that, in inflaming the passions of the Negro against the Southern 
whites, they are at the same time kindling race animosities in the North, 
and driving all whites and blacks into opposing camps. It is amazing 
that the race which has the most to lose from race prejudice should be 
the most deliberate and aggressive in stirring it up. The rampant type 
of Negro would do well to take the hint thrown out by the Chicago 
Tribune, to wit: “The blacks form less than ten percent of the popu- 
lation of the United States. They have less than one-tenth of a ghost 
of a show if the relations between white and black become bitterly 
hostile.” 28 

The jeremiad of the Negroes concerning the white South, which 
has been carried on since the Civil War, is causing the colored people 
to lose the sympathy and support of a class of whites, both in the 
North and in the South, whose help the colored people of our country 
greatly need now, and will hereafter need more urgently. 

As evidence that the Negroes are losing hold upon the best class 
of white people, I will cite the following remarks by writers outside of 
the South: 


* Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 225. 
* Quoted in Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 552. 


518 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Reverend Francis J. Grimké, a prominent Negro of Washington, 
D. C., says: “Many of those who were our best friends, who stood by 
us during the great struggle for freedom, before and immediately after 
the war, are now on the other side . . . if there should be an uprising 
of the blacks, there would not only be a united South, but also a united 
North, to crush it out.” *° 

William Archer, our English critic, observes that in the North 
“the dislike of the individual has greatly increased, the theoretic fond- 
ness for the race has very perceptibly cooled.” *° 

The Outlook quotes with approval the remarks of A. H. Stone of 
Mississippi on the two types of Negro leaders. In introducing Dr. 
Moton to an audience at Greenville, Mississippi, Mr. Stone said: “There 
are to-day two groups of Negro leaders—groups which are as wide 
apart as the Poles and which are as distinct as the whites and Negroes 
themselves. I am not going to call any names. One set of Negro 
leaders is distinctly radical. The leadership of the other group is con- 
servative and is working for peace and harmony between the races. 
It is left with the white people to choose which Negro leadership they 
will encourage. 

“There is no more trying position in American life to-day than 
that of a conservative Negro leader in the South. He must steer an 
even course and at the same time maintain his position of leadership 
without sacrificing any right principle. When Booker T. Washington 
died and I was appealed to for a suggestion as to the man to succeed 
him, I replied, without hesitation, that Robert R. Moton stood head and 
shoulders above all other men.” 

The Outlook adds this comment: “Mr. W. Anthony Aery, the 
secretary of Hampton, himself a white man, tells us that in traveling 
with Dr. Moton on the trip, during which the Greenville meeting was 
held, he found himself comparing conditions between the races as they 
are now and as they were when years ago he made a similar trip with 
Booker Washington. He noted in Mississippi ‘a growing spirit of racial 
good will and racial cooperation.’ He found ‘white and black folks 
everywhere discovering—almost intuitively—that they cannot make much 
real progress by hoeing their rows as separate groups. They are dis- 
covering that they can go ahead very much faster by pulling together 
and by forgetting some of their differences.’ 


”™The Negro, His Rights and Wrongs, p. 34. 
* Through Afro-America, p. 209. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 519 


“We agree with Mr. Aery’s conclusion that ‘the influence of men 
like Booker T. Washington, Robert R. Moton, and others, scoffed at 
as conservatives, has been invaluable in bringing about this era of good 
feeling.’ ” 

Maurice Evans, an Englishman, having become acquainted with the 
militant school of Negroes during his sojourn in the United States, is 
led to remark: “The impression I got was that it was essentially a 
mulatto movement. The leaders I met were mostly men of mixed blood, 
and whatever may be the composition of the rank and file, it may be 
taken as true that those who inaugurated the movement, and those 
who gave it force and direction, are in the main whites and part whites. 
This is what I should have expected.** 

“Whenever and wherever I met the disciples of this school I knew 
what to expect,—a list of grievances, injustices and insults, and I got 
to expect exaggeration. As my personal experience widened with my 
travels and observations, I was able to cite what I had seen, sometimes 
in extenuation, but this was seldom favorably received. It seemed to 
me, that rather than accept palliatives, even when tending to establish 
permanently better relations, they would reject them, and unless any 
change went to the root of the matter, would prefer to hear that the 
bonds were tightened rather than relaxed, thus giving them additional 
cause for complaint. 

“T have before me a copy of a letter, couched in the most courteous 
terms, written by a white sympathizer, and remonstrating at the tone of 
certain articles which criticize recent racial occurrences, and counselling 
that a more moderate tone be adopted. The reply, which may be said 
to represent officially the opinions and temper of this school, is full of 
stinging bitterness, with caustic and biting references to such careful 
and cushioned friends, who will not follow them all the way. 

“There is a conspicuous absence of anything like a constructive side 
of their policy. In scathing terms they refer to the industrial move- 
ment among the Negroes, and deride the efforts to make a carpenter out 
of that which they contend is not yet a man. First they say, let the 
Negro be made a man with a man’s rights, and then set to work to 
make him what else you will. . . . This party or school do not, how- 
ever, seem to assist the Negro to improve his condition by education or 
otherwise. 

“Tt struck me as somewhat cowardly to fulminate against abuses in 

* Black and White in the Southern States, p. 199. 


520 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





the comparative safety of the North, and create bitter disaffection 
among those in the South who might have to suffer grievous wrong as 
the result of imbibing such teaching.” *? 

Ray Stannard Baker, a Bostonian, thus expresses himself on the 
subject: “While Washington is building a great educational institution, 
and organizing the practical activities of the race, DuBois is the lonely 
critic holding up distant ideals. Where Washington cultivates friendly 
human relationships with white people among whom the lot of the 
Negro is cast, DuBois, sensitive to rebuff, draws more and more away 
from white people... .” * 

“Down at the bottom—it will seem trite, but it is eternally true— 
the cause of the race problem, and most other social problems, is simply 
lack of understanding and sympathy between man and man. And the 
remedy is equally simple—a gradual substitution of understanding and 
sympathy for blind repulsion and hatred.” *4 

“Owing to the increase of Negro population, and for other causes 
which I have already mentioned, sentiment in the North toward the 
Negro has been undergoing a swift change.” *° 

“In every large city both white and colored people told me that 
race feeling and discrimination were rapidly increasing.” °° 

The cause of growing prejudice against the Negro: “is the bump- 
tiousness, the airiness of the half-ignorant young Negro, who, feeling 
that he has rights, wants to be occupied constantly in using them. He 
mistakes liberty for license.” *” 

“Summed up, I think the feeling of the better class of people in 
Boston (and elsewhere in Northern cities) might be thus stated: ‘We 
have helped the Negro to liberty; we have helped to educate him; we 
have encouraged him to stand on his own feet. Now let’s see what he 
can do for himself. After all, he must survive or perish by his own 
enrOriso ne 

The drifting apart of the races seems to have been observed by 
DuBois: “Nothing has come to replace that finer sympathy and love 
between some masters and house servants, which the radical and more 


” Black and White in the Southern States, p. 199. 
* Following the Color Line, p. 223. 

Tol Wid. DP. 30T, 

™ (bid. D.. 218. 

ie Rn bee 

"hid. p. 125. 

*Tbid., p. 118. 


DIFFERENT NEGRO POINTS OF VIEW 521 


uncompromising drawing of the color line in recent years has caused 
almost completely to disappear.’ °° 

Frederick H. Hoffman speaks of Negro leadership as follows: 
“While here and there some able men of the colored race have sounded 
the word of warning, and have preached the gospel of hard work and 
self-help, the great majority of those who have undertaken to direct 
the fortunes of the negro race have, through false education, diverted 
the tendencies of the race in a direction which must lead to disaster.” *° 

William H. Thomas, author of The American Negro, regards the 
racial problem as one which the Negro must solve himself by a regen- 
eration of his character. He believes, as the typical religious evangelist, 
that the most important thing in life is the individual’s choice between 
righteousness and sin, and between wisdom and folly. 

“The truth is,” says Thomas, “that Negroes have not yet realized 
that their inefficiency is due to fundamental and inherent traits of 
character in no sense related to external conditions. Nor do they 
comprehend that the eradication of such characteristic defects is the 
one thing needful before they can hope to secure recognition and place 
among the efficient forces of society.” * 

“The relation between the races is daily becoming more liable at 
any moment to precipitate actual hostilities between them. The grav- 
ity of the situation is further accentuated for the reason that the ig- 
norant and credulous freedmen have no adequate conception of their 
shortcomings. Devoid of discernment and sober judgment, they pose 
as the peers of their immediate white fellow-citizens, such is their 
colossal conceit, and are imbued with the belief that the people of the 
North stand ready to support and defend them in these pretensions.” * 

Thomas adds in reference to the Negro leader: “His fiery denun- 
ciations of social ostracisms are marvels of rhetorical rhapsody, and 
his fervid prophesies of the achievements of his people a hundred years 
hence reach the topmost wave of hysterical ecstasy; but as to how 
the race, with its millenniums of sensuous burdens, can attain the one 
or eliminate the other, he is portentously silent, because he obviously 
has no suggestion to make.” * 

“While Saxon industry and courage are achieving their purpose, 


* “Relation of Negroes to Whites,” Annals of the American Academy, Vol. 18, 
Denlet: 

” Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 286. 

“The American Negro, p. 207. 

aL OSGi Dy 227% PS Tbid. npeigsts 


522 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Negro lethargy, Micawber-like, stands waiting for something to turn up 
in the way of donated relief.” ** 

“Though golden opportunities for acquiring knowledge and material 
gain lie all about him, such is his characteristic shiftlessness and so in- 
trenched is he in mental stubborness and foolish egoism, that he is 
never other than a sensuous dawdler, glorying in self-laudation.” * 

In regard to the Negro’s complaint of repression by the whites, 
Thomas remarks: “In setting up this plea, the fact is overlooked that, 
while other races gather in the fruits of achievement, he lies at the 
bottom of our social organization expending energy in useless mur- 
murs.” 46 Thomas further adds the remark that “the accredited spokes- 
men of the race are incessantly striving to shift their obvious duties 
to other shoulders, and lay the blame of their own misdeeds to other 
causes than their own shortcomings.” *7 

Even some Boston Negroes seem to be out of sympathy with the 
radical type of leadership. One of them, writing to the New York Age, 
remarks that the better element of both white and colored people is 
disgusted over the frequent assembling of radicals in Faneuil Hall, and 
the “throwing up of their hats, yelling and going into hysterics over 
some subject relating to somebody a thousand miles away, never in re- 
lation to conditions right at home.” 48 

The Negroes in America have had too many Moseses leading them 
into, instead of out of, the wilderness. They have been kept in a state 
of alternate hysteria and prostration from the over stimulation of their 
passions. Their grievances, real and imaginary, have been overworked. 
Their vision of the realities of life has been so highly colored by exag- 
geration that they have lost the faculty of rational judgment. Pro- 
fessor Willcox remarks in this connection: “I cannot accept a large 
proportion of the accounts printed in Northern papers, describing the 
relations of the two races in the South. One of the virtues of civiliza- 
tion imperfectly developed in the Negro race is veracity, and accounts 
coming from them must be tested carefully before acceptance.” *° 

Among races, as among individuals, sympathy is not to be won by 
perpetual whining. The too frequent exposure of one’s sores, however 
distressing, tends to drive away friends. 


“Thomas, The American Negro, p. 354. 

TyL010 een TO, *Tbid., p. 340. 
“ Toid., p. 136. 

“Quoted from Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 227. 
“© Studies in American Race Problems, p. 472. 


PART EIGHT 
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CHAPTER 66 
BIOLOGICAL CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 


Absence of a Solution of the Negro Problem in Social Science—Relinquishment 
of the Problem to the Biological Principle of the Survival of the Fittest— 
Probability of the Survival of the Negro from the Standpoint of History 
and Vital Statistics 


HERE seems to be no solution of the Negro problem from the 
standpoint of social science. Neither anthropology nor sociology, 

nor political science, has yet announced any tenet upon which a solu- 
tion might be proposed. Certainly history offers no instance of the 
harmonious commingling of a white and a black race in the same ter- 
ritory, and none of the proposed solutions so far attempted, or advo- 
cated in the United States, offers any prospect of proving workable. 
The Negro problem, like that of mixing oil and water, is insoluble, 
and the authorities most competent to speak on the subject generally 
confess it to be a problem for which there is no solution. “To-day, 
more than ever,” says Hoffman, “the colored race forms a distinct ele- 
ment, and presents more than at any time in the past the most compli- 
cated and seemingly hopeless problem among those confronting the 
American people.” + Henry Nevinson, who has studied the Negro in 
the United States and in Africa, is of the opinion that, “The whole 
problem is still before us as urgent and uncertain as it has ever been. 
It is not solved. What seemeth a solution is already obsolete. The 
problem will have to be worked through again from the start.” ? 

When, however, human prevision fails to find a solution to a race 
problem it has to work itself out blindly through the operation of the 
laws of biology. In case of competition of two species, the fitter sur- 
vives and the less fit perishes. Have we such a situation in the 
presence of the Negro and Caucasian in the United States? Is it 
possible for both to survive under condition of competition? 

Some light on the probability of the survival of the Negro in 
America may be gained by an inquiry into the effect of contact of the 

*Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 1. 

* Harpers Monthly, Vol, 111, p. 348. 

525 


526 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Negro and the Caucasian in other parts of the world. History furnishes 
us with several instances of a competitive struggle between these two 
races, and between the Negro and the yellow and brown races. The 
French ethnologist Quatrefages states that the Negro type originated 
in southern Asia, and was the sole occupant of that region for an in- 
definite period. Then it migrated eastward, giving rise to the black 
populations of Melanesia, and westward, giving rise to the black popu- 
lations of Africa. The earliest type of Negro, says Quatrefages, was 
a pygmy which was partly exterminated and partly driven into the 
most mountainous and inhospitable districts by the development of a 
taller and more vigorous Negro type. The taller type supplanted the 
pygmies, and spread over a vast territory in southern Asia, Melanesia, 
and Africa. In all of these regions, however, it has been gradually 
giving way to the advances of the yellow and white races. 

The English ethnologist, Keane, agrees with Quatrefages that the 
Negro race once occupied vast domains in Asia, Oceania, and Africa, 
but has been steadily losing ground as a result of yellow and white 
immigration.? A branch of the Negro race which at one time spread 
over a large part of India has entirely disappeared as a result of the 
encroachments of the white race, leaving, as evidence of its existence 
there, only the present dark-brown Dravidians, who represent an early 
mixture of the Negro and Aryan.* In Africa, within the historic 
period, the Negro in the North has been yielding territory to the 
more aggressive Semites, Libyans, and Berbers; and in the South and 
West, to the races of Europe. 

The Bushmen who constituted a large aboriginal element in South 
Africa,®> have been gradually driven into the Kalahari desert by the 
Bantu, and there they have suffered further depletion from the Dutch, 
who shot them down as wild beasts. The Hottentots, a pygmy race 
akin to the Bushmen, who at one time, as pastoral nomads, roamed 
over the whole of Cape Colony, have almost become extinct as a result 
of their contact with the Dutch and the English. Only a small rem- 
nant of them now survives north of the Orange River. The more hardy 
Kafirs, who once occupied large sections of eastern and northern Cape 
Colony, have been partly driven north into the forests, and partly 
utilized as a serving class for the Dutch and English. But both those 
that have been driven out and those remaining as servants have suffered 


® Keane, Ethnology, Ch. XI. 
*Quatrefages, The Pygmies, p. 52; Keane, Ethnology, p. 254. 
° Keane, Ethnology, p. 248. 


BIOLOGICAL CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 527 
a great falling off in numbers as a consequence of contact with white 
civilization. In West Africa, where the British, French, German, and 
Portuguese have planted settlements, the native population has tended 
toward rapid decline. 

In the Black Islands, 1. e., that long string of islands stretching from 
New Guinea to Fiji, contact with the Europeans has everywhere re- 
sulted in a great diminution in the native Negro population. In the 
Fiji group the population has dwindled, within fifty years, from about 
200,000 to 94,400.° 

In Brazil and Cuba the declining birth-rate and high death-rate of 
the Negro population indicate, if not ultimate extinction, a progressive 
decline in the relative strength of the Negro population. In Santo 
Domingo and Haiti, the Negro has survived by exterminating the whites 
and excluding them from citizenship, and in the British West Indies 
the Negro, under a highly paternal control, survives, but with a dimin- 
ishing birth-rate and high death-rate which are not reassuring for the 
future. 

It seems that not only the Negro, but other races on a low level of 
culture have uniformly undergone rapid physical deterioration and 
decline of population as a result of contact with Caucasian civiliza- 
tion. For instance, note the Tasmanians, extinct since 1850, the aborig- 
inal Australians, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Hawaiians, formerly 
numbering 500,000, now reduced to less than 50,000, the Indians of 
Oklahoma, etcetera. This deterioration of the lower cultured races 
shows itself in a decline in their birth-rate and an increase in their 
death-rate brought about through inadaptability to the discipline of the 
white man’s institutions.’ 

Let us now turn to mortality statistics, and see what light they throw 
on the probable survival of the Negro in America. 

As soon as the Negroes were emancipated they began to leave the 
homes of the white people, and to segregate themselves in the towns 
and in the country where, freed from the oversight of their former 
masters and mistresses, they lived under conditions which favored the 
development and spread of a variety of diseases. A rise in their death- 
rate was, therefore, inevitable. 

The first authoritative study of the vital statistics of the Negro was 


*“Australasia,’ Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel, Vol. 2, 
p. 485. 

"For fuller discussion of the causes of deterioration see Dowd, The Negro 
Foces; Vole Chy XOXIX: 


528 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


made in 1896 by Frederick Hoffman, statistician of the Prudential Life 
Insurance Company, the object of the study being to ascertain if life 
insurance could be safely offered to the Negro race. Hoffman found 
that the mortality of the Negro was two or three times that of the 
whites, and he attributed the higher mortality of the Negro to his con- 
stitutional weakness and his bad traits which led him into vice. He 
quoted the Union Army records of the Civil War showing that the 
Negroes enlisted were less infected with diseases than the whites, but 
that their death-rate from diseases was three times greater than that 
of the whites.® 

Then he pointed out that, following the Civil War, the mortality 
records of Charleston, 1865-1894, show a death-rate of the Negro from 
consumption much greater than that of the whites; that statistics of 
the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1865-1872, show a higher death-rate for the 
Negro from constitutional and respiratory diseases.® 

An examination of the mortality records of the Negro in all sections 
of the country prior to 1896 revealed the fact that his death-rate was 
relatively high and tending to increase. 

Hoffman, therefore, came to the conclusion that the high mortality 
of the Negro, as manifested since the Civil War, was unfavorable to 
his survival. He believed that everywhere the great cause of the dying 
out of backward peoples in contact with the Caucasian is unchastity, 
and that the vices of the Negro in America are the chief cause of 
his high mortality. “It is not in the conditions of life,’ he said, “but 
in the race traits and tendencies that we find the causes of the exces- 
sive mortality. So long as these tendencies are persisted in, so long 
as immorality and vice are the habit of life of the vast majority of the 
colored population, the effect will be to increase the mortality by hered- 
itary transmission of weak constitutions, and to lower still further the 
rate of natural increase, until the births fall below the deaths, and 
gradual extinction results.” 1° 

This gloomy outlook for the Negro seemed to be justified by the data 
available at the time of Hoffman’s investigation. 

Since the year of Hoffman’s investigation, however, the Negro 
death-rate has very notably declined. From Igto to 1g2t the rate fell 
from 24.2 to 18.4. Indeed, the Negro death-rate has shown a greater 
decline in recent years than the white rate. The decline in the rate for 

*Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 74. 


* Tbid., p. 80. 
® Ibid., p. 95. 


BIOLOGICAL CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 529 


the whites in the registration area between 1910 and 1920 was 17.7 per- 
cent, that for Negroes 23.9 percent. The Negro death-rate now is no 
higher than was that of the whites in 1890. For example, the white 
death-rate in New York City in 1890 was 28.5 per thousand. The 
Negro death-rate of that city in 1921 was only 17.9 per thousand. In 
the same city in 1919 the Negro infant mortality was 151 per thousand 
births, which was less than the white infant mortality in 1890 in New 
Orleans, Charleston, or Richmond. Among the Negroes insured in 
the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the deaths from tubercu- 
losis have fallen forty-two percent since 1911.1? 

A general decline in the death-rate of the Negro for every age period 
is indicated in the statistics of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Com- 
pany covering 1,500,000 of its policy holders for the past decade. Com- 
menting upon these figures, Woofter says: “Among the very young 
children the death-rate has dropped more than one-half. Tuberculosis 
mortality has decreased from 418 per 100,000 to 244, or 42 percent. 
Deaths from typhoid and malaria, which especially affect the rural 
districts, declined 75 per cent. In spite of the influenza epidemics, 
deaths from pneumonia have declined 26 per cent. Improvement along 
so many and diverse lines is most hopeful and indicates beyond a 
shadow of a doubt that the colored people have awakened to the im- 
portance of the health problem in their affairs.” ?” 

But, in spite of the gratifying showing of these figures, the death 
rate of the Negro is still dangerously high. According to the statistics 
of 1920, in eleven states which keep separate records, the adjusted 
rate of mortality from tuberculosis is three times as great for the 
Negroes as for the whites. About the same ratio holds for the respira- 
tory diseases, according to the reports of the Metropolitan Life Insur- 
ance Company. At present the Negro death-rate is 18.4 compared to 
12.8 for the whites. 

The high mortality of the Negro is a great handicap in his struggle 
for existence. The larger proportion of Negroes who die before 
reaching the age of self-maintenance represents an immense economic 
loss to the race. For example, in a million of Negroes born in Wash- 
ington City only 499,169 survive to the age of five as compared to 
739,061 whites surviving to that age—a difference of 240,492 lives. 
An economic waste of such magnitude places the Negro at a great 


“E. K. Jones, “The Negro’s Struggle for Health,” Opportunity, June, 1923, 


p. 4. 
™The Basis of Racial Adjustment, p. 62. 


530 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


disadvantage in comparison with the Caucasian. And the economic 
loss to the Negro through illness is even greater than the loss through 
death. For instance, in the town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, an in- 
vestigation by the Missouri Negro Industrial Commission revealed the 
fact that the wage-working Negroes of the town averaged a loss of 
sixty-five days—eighteen percent of the year—due to illness. The 
Negro Year Book estimates that 450,000 Negroes are seriously ill at 
any one time, and that the annual loss to the race in earnings through 
sickness and death is $300,000,000. 

The most discouraging aspect of the Negro’s future, however, is not 
his high death-rate but the rapid. falling off in his birth-rate. For in- 
stance, in the last decade, 1910-20, his birth-rate declined seventeen 
percent as compared to a decline of only 2.5 percent for the whites. 
As the Negroes change from rural to city life their birth-rate falls 
faster than that of the whites who undergo the same change.** 

The death-rate of the Negro already exceeds the birth-rate in most 
of the states outside of the South. Only in the Black Belt of the 
South does the Negro show an encouraging excess of births over deaths. 
In the Piedmont region of the South, where industrial life is complex 
and strenuous and fast approaching conditions which obtain in the North 
and West, the Negro death-rate more nearly equals his birth-rate. 

If the decline in the birth-rate of the Negro is due in any large meas- 
ure to vice and disease, and not to prudential considerations, there is 
a strong probability that it will continue to fall until it sinks below the 
death-rate. 

Raymond Pearl, in discussing the vital index of the Negro (the 
vital index being the ratio of 100 births divided by the deaths), says 
that “except in the rural districts of the southern states, practically 
never does the vital index of the Negro population rise to a value of 
as much as 100. But plainly any population with a vital index under 
100 is a dying population. ... 

“Under conditions as they are, Nature, by the slow but dreadfully 
sure processes of biological evolution is apparently solving the Negro 
problem in the United States in a manner which, when finished, will 
be like all Nature’s solutions, final, complete, and absolutely definite. 
Just in proportion as the Negro becomes anything but an agricultural 
laborer in the southern states does he hasten the time of his final ex- 
tinction in this country.” ' 


* “Negro Population in the U. S. 1790-1915,” Census Report, p. 290. 
* Quoted by Holmes, Studies in Evolution and Eugenics, p. 253. 


BIOLOGICAL CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 531 


But, whatever inferences may be drawn from statistics, there is one 
consideration which weighs against the possible extinction of the Negro 
in the United States, and it is that what we call Negro mortality statistics 
include data derived from a wide variation of ethnic elements. About 
twenty percent of our so-called Negroes are people with varying degrees 
of Caucasian blood and Caucasian traits, and among the Negroes of 
pure African strain at least five percent have been blended with various 
African stocks such as the Semitic, Libyan, and Galla, whose traits 
differ widely from those of the West African, who constituted the bulk 
of our slave population. 

If, therefore, we take the most pessimistic view possible of the 
Negro’s vitality statistics and assume that the bulk of the race in the 
United States possesses inherited traits which unfit them for survival 
in our highly complex environment, we have to remember that twenty- 
five percent of our Negro population is made up of ethnic elements 
which retain very slight traces of the West African stock. 

Is it not reasonable to suppose that at least this twenty-five percent 
will be able to adapt itself to the conditions of existence in the United 
States ? 


CHAPTER 67 
ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 


Probability of the Survival of the Negro from the Standpoint of His Economic 
Status—His Apparent Failure to Advance up to 1895—Gloomy Predictions 
for His Future at That Time—Wonderful Strides After 1895 under the 
Leadership of Booker Washington—Rise of a Prosperous Negro Middle 
Class—Problem of the Ability of the Negro to Keep Pace with the Ever- 
Increasing Specialization and Inténsification of Industry 


N the next place, what is the outlook for the survival of the American 

Negro from the standpoint of his being able to make a living? How 

is he succeeding in the various occupations in securing the means of 
subsistence ? 

Up to about 1895 competent judges doubted whether upon the whole 

the Negro had made any progress in industrial efficiency. Frederick 
Hoffman, writing in 1896, made the most pessimistic predictions in 
regard to the Negro’s industrial future. He found that in Mississippi, 
even where the Negro occupied the more fertile land, the white man 
produced nearly twice as much cotton to the acre. He found that in 
Virginia the total product of tobacco and the product per acre fell off 
in the five counties in which the Negroes were the chief cultivators. 
“This falling off,” he said, “is more the result of diminishing economic 
efficiency in the Negro in this branch of agriculture than of changes in 
the productiveness of the soil, or the substitution of other crops.” ? 
He found that in South Carolina and Georgia the total product of rice 
and also the product per acre had fallen off in the rice areas where the 
Negro was the chief cultivator, and in reference to this he said: “We 
must attribute a decreasing production more to the growing inefficiency 
of Negro labor than to other economic causes.” ? He quotes from the 
Progressive South the statement that: “it is seldom that sufficient 
ability is found in a Negro to permit him to manage and cultivate even 
a small farm. When his land is paid for, his labor becomes impaired 
in its value to the community in which he lives, as he will subsist on 
next to nothing and work only when necessity compels.” ° 

*Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 256. 

* Dbtd.. pc 250. 

* Ihid., p. 268. 

932 


ee 


ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 533 


On the basis of such evidence as this, Hoffman was led to believe 
that: “while the settlement of the Negro on land which is his own may 
insure a happier and less burdensome existence, it is very doubtful 
whether such a condition would not, in the end, prove more of a hin- 
drance than a help to the economic progress of the South,” and “that, 
if the present tendency towards a lower degree of economic efficiency 
is persisted in, the day is not far distant when the Negro laborer of 
the South will be gradually supplanted by the native laborer.” 4 

As for the final outcome, he said: “In the plain language of the facts 
brought together, the colored race is shown to be on a downward grade, 
tending towards a condition in which matters will be worse than they 
are now, when disease will be more destructive, vital resistance still 
lower, when the number of births will fall below the deaths and gradual 
extinction of the race take place.” ® 

Professor Shaler of Harvard University, writing just a few years 
later than Hoffman, remarked that: “Wherever a black man owns a 
place he neglects it; he is usually content with a dirty shanty, and while 
he has much natural faculty for the immediate tasks of the farmer, his 
lack of foresight leads him to wear out his fields. As is well known, 
the lands of the South have been sorely taxed by bad agriculture, though 
of late years there has been a very great improvement in this regard. 
There is evidently reason to fear further depredations from an ex- 
tended possession of the soil by the Negroes. Here we shall have to 
trust to the imitative motive of the race, and to the training of a minority 
of them in the art of farming, with the hope that the contagion of 
example may help the conditions.” ° 

Alfred H. Stone, a Mississippi planter, using data of the years 
1898-1905, showed that the Italian cotton growers in Chicot County, 
Arkansas, produced 120.1 percent more lint cotton per acre than the 
Negroes.’ | 

Professor Walter F. Willcox, of Cornell University, on the basis of 
data obtained prior to 1900, pointed out that the cultivation of crops in 
which the Negro formerly had a monopoly was shifting to other sec- 
tions of the country where the labor was chiefly or entirely white.® 

“From all the evidence,” he says, “it seems clear that Southern 


* Tbid., p. 308. 

mt... Ds 312 

*The Neighbor, p. 172. 

* Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 183. 
*Tbid., p. 450. 


534 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


agriculture is becoming increasingly diversified, and is demanding and 
receiving a constantly increasing amount of industry, energy, and in- 
telligence—characteristics which the whites more generally possess or 
more readily develop.” ® 

Even prominent colored men of nee period took a pessimistic view 
of the Negro’s economic future. For instance, Professor Hugh M. 
Browne of Washington said to a Negro audience in 1894: “White 
men are bringing science and art into menial occupations and lifting 
them beyond our reach. In my boyhood the household servants were 
coloured, but now in the establishments of the ‘four hundred’ one finds 
trained white servants. Then the walls and ceilings were whitewashed 
each spring by coloured men: now they are decorated by skilled white 
artisans. Then the carpets were beaten by coloured men: now this is 
done by a white man managing a steam carpet-cleaning works,” etcetera. 

William H. Thomas, a Negro author, in 1901 made this forecast 
for his race: “It does not necessarily follow that race extinction in- 
volves physical death through strife and carnage; that is an improbable 
event. Negro elimination, however, is just as inexorably decreed 
through the dry rot of mental and spiritual inanition; and to these 
forces he is fated to succumb, should he not yield ready obedi- 
ence to the ethical and mental evolution in visible operation around 
him,*7° 

Up to 1895 the available evidence on the economic status of the 
Negro did not seem to justify a favorable outlook. The mulatto class 
were losing out in the skilled trades and in domestic service, which had 
belonged to them by tradition, while the mass of blacks on the farms, 
having gained very little in the way of education, appeared to be de- 
creasing in productive power. 

At the close of the Civil War there were two classes of Negroes 
very wide apart in economic status and opportunity. One class, a 
small minority, comprised the sons and daughters of free parents, the 
former domestic slaves in the households of the whites, and the recently 
emancipated artisans. The members of this class were nearly all mulat- 
toes, and nearly all educated, i. e., they could read and write, and were 
skilled in some kind of work. They constituted the aristocracy of the 
colored population. 

The other class comprised the great mass of blacks who had been 
the field hands on the slave plantations. They could neither read nor 


* Quoted from Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 453. 
The American Negro, p. 413. 


ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 535 


write, and had had very little opportunity to know white people or to 
imitate their virtues. Therefore, among the colored people of the 
South, after the Civil War, as among the white people prior thereto, 
there was no middle class, and the contrast in culture between the top 
and the bottom of society was very great. 

No one who has yet written on the Negro problem seems to have 
comprehended the initial difficulty of the Negro’s finding an economic 
footing for himself at the close of the Civil War. 

The mulatto class, though able to read and write and do skilled 
work, were handicapped by the great mass of ignorant blacks who 
were too poor to support a colored man in any kind of service to his 
race except that of preaching. ‘They were, therefore, obliged to find a 
livelihood by continuing to be the servants of white people. The 
larger proportion of mulattoes, of both sexes, took up domestic work, 
which was a blind alley leading to no promotion. The artisans among 
the mulattoes had to compete with the rising middle class of whites who 
had taken up the crafts formerly carried on only by slaves. In this 
competition the mulattoes, of course, gradually lost out. It is no won- 
der that so many mulattoes went into politics during the Reconstruc- 
tion period and later went into the ministry. 

The great black mass, illiterate and unacquainted with any work 
except agriculture, found their chief and almost only opportunity in 
cultivating the soil as tenants or wage workers. Without capital, or 
experience in self-direction, and with no ability to learn by reading, 
they could not, in large numbers, do efficient work and get far enough 
ahead to become farm owners. Conditions, however, were favorable for 
the Negro’s acquiring land. Many estates in the South had been con- 
fiscated and abandoned, and some of these were settled by Negro 
tenants or purchasers. The migration of the white planters to the 
towns rendered available for renting or buying thousands of acres of 
land at low prices. A large number of Negroes had earned good 
wages as laborers for the Union armies, and the Freedmen’s Bureau 
paid out about $7,000,000 in bounties to Negro soldiers. 

“During the first ten years after the war,” says Booker Washing- 
ton, “a large part of this money was invested in Southern States. Dur- 
ing the next ten years, from 1876 to 1886, Negroes increased their 
holdings in farm land by nearly 100 percent, having at the close of 
that period 802,939 acres of land, the assessed value of which was 
$2,508,198.” 11 

™ The Story of the Negro, p. 41. 


536 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


Up to about 1895 the most notable industrial achievement of the 
Negroes was the acquisition of land, but this achievement did not 
represent a great advance in the efficiency or well-being of the Negro 
farmers. For the most part the rural Negroes lived in shacks, plowed 
with lean stock, kept few hogs or chickens, raised few vegetables, used 
no fertilizers, practiced no rotation of crops, and consequently ob- 
tained a poor yield per acre. 

Since 1895, however, the industrial status of the Negro has under- 
gone a very great transformation. Evidence of progress is now visible 
in all lines of activity. 

In order to appreciate the magnitude of the Negro’s achievement 
in the past thirty years, we shall have to visualize the kind of founda- 
tion which any people have to build before they can erect a stable in- 
dustrial structure. 

The progress of a people in industry, as in science and art, depends 
upon the development of a group spirit, organization, and leadership, 
the accumulation of models, types, or patterns, a certain ripeness of 
tradition, and a sufficient freedom from strain to permit of reflection 
and meditation. No matter how muth genius a race may have, much 
time has to elapse before these favoring conditions can be evolved. 
If it has required two centuries for the white man of America to achieve 
a marked degree of industrial efficiency, and two centuries and a half 
for him to achieve anything notable in the fine arts, we should hardly 
expect the Negro, with his ignorance and background of servitude, to 
make great strides in any line during the first thirty years of his 
freedom. 

The first essential for the industrial advancement of the Negro was 
the development of a group or racial consciousness, and this was not 
possible until the mass of Negroes had learned to read and write, and 
had built up a press to serve as a means of disseminating common 
ideas and of awakening common aspirations. It was not until thirty 
years after the Civil War that there was sufficient enlightenment and 
means of communication among the Negroes to serve as instruments 
of racial consciousness and racial direction. 

The great turning-point in the career of the American Negroes 
was the year 1895 when their self-consciousness was aroused and 
set in motion by the meteoric appearance of Booker T. Washington as 
their leader. 

The first task of Dr. Washington was to impress upon his people 
the fact “that economic efficiency was the foundation for every kind 


ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 537 


of success.” 7? He tells in his Story of the Negro how the Negro 
leaders after the Civil War had imitated the white aristocracy before 
the war in finding their chief career in politics, and how this tended 
to lead the colored people to look for their salvation in some kind 
of help from the national government instead of working it out for 
themselves by self-reliance and thrift. He relates how a community of 
colored people near Tuskegee, Alabama, raised funds and sent a spokes- 
man to Washington to ascertain if the new administration (Garfield’s) 
“would do something to better their condition,’ ** and how they were 
cast down over the failure of their spokesman to accomplish anything. 
In the meantime the spirit of the new gospel of self-reliance and thrift 
emanating from Tuskegee permeated the community and even con- 
verted the man who had been sent to importune the Garfield adminis- 
tration. “Since that time,’ says Dr. Washington, “he has purchased 
a farm, has built a decent, comfortable house; is educating his chil- 
dren, and I note that never a session of the monthly Farmer’s Institute 
assembles at Tuskegee that this man does not come and bring some 
of the products from his farm to exhibit to his fellow-farmers. . 

He has learned that he can do for himself what the authorities at Wash- 
ington could not do for him, and that is make his life a success.” ™* 

The spirit of Tuskegee began to infect the whole rural population 
of colored people, and the result was more landowners, better methods 
of cultivation, better homes, and better neighborhoods. 

Professor George W. Carver of Tuskegee set the pace by raising 
266 bushels of sweet potatoes on a single acre, as compared to the 
average for the country around of thirty-seven bushels,?® and by rais- 
ing 500 pounds of cotton on one acre as compared to the average yield 
for the South of only 190 pounds.'® 

Some examples of the increasing efficiency of the Negro farmer 
are as follows: : 

Alfred Smith, a former slave in Georgia, made himself famous as 
“the cotton king’ of Oklahoma, having won the first prize for his cot- 
ton in Liverpool and at the World’s Fair in Paris.’” 

Sam McCord of Alabama has won fame from the fact that while 


* Washington, The Story of the Negro, p. 192. 
8 Thid., p. 190. 

4 [bid., p. 192. 

* Washington, Working with the Hands, p. 136. 
* Thid., pp. 164-5. 

~ Dias, PD) 53. 


538 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


he farms only two acres of land, he raises on those two acres every 
year four bales of cotton, the average yield for the State being little 
more than one-third of a bale.'® 

R. L. Smith, a native of South Carolina, moved to Texas and there 
in 1906 organized the Farmers Improvement Association, the members 
of which in 1907 owned 71,439 acres of land, valued at over a million 
dollars, with live stock valued at $275,000.19 

A colored man who had been attending the farm conference at 
Tuskegee related his experience to Dr. Washington as follows: “I 
started plowing with my pants rolled up and barefoot. I saved five 
hundred dollars and bought a home in Albany, Georgia. I bought 
two hundred acres for seven dollars an acre, and paid for it in three 
years. I made that pay for two hundred acres more. After awhile I 
bought thirteen hundred acres. [ live on it, and it is all paid for. I 
have twenty-five buildings and they all came out of my pocketbook. 
That land is now worth twenty-five dollars an acre. For a distance 
of four or five miles from my settlement, there has not been a man in 
the chain-gang for years. I work forty-seven head of mules. The only 
way we will ever be a race is by getting homes and living a virtuous 
life. I don’t give mortgages. I take mortgages on black and white. 
I have put the first bale of cotton on the market in Georgia every 
year for eight years.” ?° 

After all, it was not the money side of industrial work that most 
interested Booker Washington. “Every bale of cotton,” he says, “can 
be turned into books, into opportunity for travel and study. The man 
who grows corn must remember that the growing of corn is not the end 
of life, but that corn can be turned into refinements and beauties of a 
civilized life and a Christian home.” #4 

How Booker: Washington looked upon farming as merely the means 
to a higher culture is shown in the building he erected at Tuskegee for 
the children of the town and vicinity, named ““The Children’s House,” 
where children were taught to cultivate flowers and shrubbery, to sweep, 
dust, set a table, and make the home attractive. 

The second task which Booker Washington set himself to accom- 
plish was to develop a middle class of Negroes to occupy the great va- 


* Washineton, Working with the Hands, p. 54. 
* TIbid., p. 380. 

” Ibid., p. 140. 

* Washington, Putting the Most into Life, p. 21. 


ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 539 


cant field between the tiller of the soil and the small class of educated 
Negroes who were engaged in politics and the ministry. 

To this end it was necessary to build up Negro culture in two direc- 
tions in which it was notably weak. First, common-school education 
needed to be more widely disseminated so that the mass of Negroes 
might become acquainted with new ideas and new opportunities. ‘Our 
students at Tuskegee,’ says Dr. Washington, “are instructed con- 
stantly in methods of building schoolhouses and prolonging the school 
term. It is safe to say that outside the larger Southern cities and towns 
in the rural district, one will find nine-tenths of the school buildings 
wholly unfit for use, and rarely is the public school session longer than 
five months—in most cases not more than four. These conditions exist 
largely because of the poverty of the States. One of the problems of 
our teachers is to show the people how through private effort they can 
build schoolhouses and extend the school term.”? 

Booker Washington spent a great deal of his time and energy in 
visiting country schools and in writing and talking in behalf of making 
them more efficient. In reference to a school he visited in South Caro- 
lina, he said: “I was recently in a school-room in South Carolina. 
The teacher had a reputation for being a well-fitted instructor, and I 
expected much of him. He was teaching the children by the latest 
methods. The children sang well, they recited their lessons well, but 
the fact that one third of the plastering was missing made the greatest 
impression on me. I could not detect the slightest attempt on the part 
of the teacher or students to see that the plastering was restored. I 
should have suspended school a day or two until the plastering could be 
replaced, rather than teach day after day by silent approval a lesson of 
disorder. If the teacher is careless, the pupils will accept his standards 
and go through life in an indifferent, slipshod manner. If from the 
first day they enter school they are surrounded with object lessons of 
order and cleanliness, more will have been done to educate them in a 
large and helpful way than if they had centred their interest in books 
alone. 

“Order and beauty are sacrificed in many of our schools because one 
third or one fourth of the window-glass is out. Sometimes I have seen 
obsolete hats and discarded dresses doing duty in the absence of win- 
dow-glass or window-panes knocked out in order that the stovepipe 
might be run through the broken place. The child never outlives the 

2 Working with the Hands, p. 210. 


540 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


impression made by such a sight. The parents will join their children 
in helping to patch broken plastering if the teacher will take the lead. 
When the plastering is mended, a few pictures should be placed on the 
walls, and in this work the parents’ cooperation can be depended 
upon.” 78 

One of the most important departments of Tuskegee was that for 
the training of school teachers. Of the results of this department, 
Booker Washington said: “There is hardly a single Southern State 
where our men and women are not found in some of the large schools 
for training teachers.” ** 

The other direction in which.Negro culture needed strengthening, 
in order to develop a middle class, was the practical arts and crafts 
and in business enterprise. To meet this need Dr. Washington offered 
training at Tuskegee in bricklaying, carpentry, tailoring, broom-making, 
mattress-making, blacksmithing, plastering, harness-making, saw-mill- 
ing, plumbing, shoe-making, electrical engineering, architecture, etcetera. 

This kind of training has enabled hundreds of Tuskegee pupils to 
carry on some skilled trade in Negro communities. 

In the matter of developing initiative, enterprise, and coopera- 
tion in trade, and in other business lines, little could be done in the 
way of instruction at Tuskegee, but one of the greatest achievements 
of Dr. Washington was in encouraging the development of his people 
in this field. He went about from town to town in all of the South- 
ern states, acquainting himself with the Negro business men, and by 
public addresses and by magazine articles tried to inspire them to greater 
achievements. 

In 1899 he organized the National Negro Business League, at a time 
when there were in the United States only 20,000 business concerns 
owned by colored people with a total capital of $10,000,000. In 1923 
the number of organizations had grown to 60,000 with a total capital 
of $60,000,000." The spirit of business cooperation and organization 
spread very rapidly among the Negroes throughout the country. Negro 
banks, insurance companies, factories, and mercantile establishments of 
various kinds came to be common in cities having a large Negro popu- 
lation. 

The result has been the development of a large middle class of 


* Washington, Putting the Most into Life, p. 14. 
*Working with the Hands, p. 211. 
*Moton, “Business Progress of the Negro,” Southern Workman, Nov., 1923, 


P. 531. 


ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 541 


Negroes. In 1895 the property owned by Negroes was mostly in 
farm land and farm houses. Now the value of city property owned 
by Negroes is fast catching up with the value of their farm property. 

For example, in 1923 the assessed value of the land owned by Ne- 
groes in North Carolina was $48,343,205 and the assessed value of 
their city property was $30,332,118. The rise of this middle class has 
meant greater opportunities for the Negro doctor, dentist, lawyer, 
editor, author, and artist. 

The great achievement of Booker Washington in increasing the 
Negro’s industrial efficiency has been contemporaneous with the shift- 
ing of Negro leadership from the preacher and politician to the educa- 
tor and the business man. 

Since 1895 the Negroes of the United States have developed all of 
the fundamental requisites of industrial efficiency, 1. e., group conscious- 
ness, organization, and leadership; and models, types, and patterns to 
stimulate emulation. 

If the Negro has made substantial progress under the adverse con- 
ditions which have existed up to the present time, will he be able to 
continue to progress under the conditions of the future? In the future 
will the conditions be more favorable or less favorable for his progress? 

Up to the present time the opportunities for the Negro have been 
in one respect very favorable in that the newness of our country has 
created an extraordinary demand for labor. In another half century it 
is certain that our country will become filled up, and, instead of receiv- 
ing a great tide of immigration from other countries, we shall be send- 
ing our overflow to South Africa, Canada, South America, and the 
islands of the seas. We shall be in the position of the older countries 
of Europe with an annual surplus of inhabitants, elbowing each other 
for jobs, and ever on the lookout for some new region to redeem. 
When that time comes, will not the Negro be at a greater disadvantage 
than he is now? Will there not be a white man applying for every 
job? And will not the Negro find the door of opportunity more tightly 
closed than ever before? In the Southern States up to now the Negroes 
have had a monopoly in the field of unskilled labor, but will not the time 
come when the pressure of population will force the white men into. 
this field? 

In the future will not our industrial system demand a higher order 
of efficiency among all classes on account of the general speeding up 
of production, the more highly specialized division of labor, and the 
standardization of methods? May we not anticipate an increasing ten- 


542 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


dency for every kind of work to require education and apprenticeship 
until the field of unskilled labor is practically abolished ? 

In the future will not the more settled conditions of industry and 
the better organization of production, in the interest of more regularity 
in the employment of labor, tend to do away with seasonal labor, or 
jobs offering long or frequent intervals of rest? And, if some scheme 
of insurance against unemployment, such as that proposed in Wiscon- 
sin, should become general, penalizing employers for dismissing em- 
ployes, will not employers be more careful what kind of labor they 
select, and will they not be chary of employing men who are apt to be 
inconstant in their work? 

The one certain fact in regard to the future is that the conditions of 
labor for the white man, as well as for the Negro, will require greater 
efficiency, and, to meet this demand, both races will have to improve 
their average inherited physical and mental capacity and undergo a 
more strenuous discipline. Will the Negro keep step with the white 
man in this kind of progress? 

Dr. Ludwig Buchner, speaking in general terms, says that backward 
peoples will never be able to catch up with civilized peoples. “All back- 
ward branches of the human family,” he asserts, “will by degrees dis- 
appear with but few exceptions under pressure of civilized man, and 
we can even now easily foresee the time when a certain uniformity of 
culture and material conditions, or a true cosmopolitanism of civilized 
man, will be diffused over the greater part of the inhabited and habitable 
part of our planet.’ *° 

In spite of much evidence of industrial progress by the American 
Negro up to 1914, Professor Mecklin, in his Democracy and Race Fric- 
tion of that date, predicted: “that the Negro in America will eventually 
disappear ; not in a generation or century, it may take several centuries. 
The means will be natural. Certain portions of the Southern States 
will for a while, perhaps, be almost given up to him; but in time he will 
be crowded out even there. Africa may take a part; the rest will, as the 
country fills up, as life grows harder and competition fiercer, become 
diffused and will disappear, a portion, perhaps, not large, by absorption 
into the stronger race; the residue by perishing under conditions of life 
unsuited to him.” 

In answer to this gloomy prophecy we may ask, why may not the 
Negro, by continuing to increase his efficiency, belie such prophecy as he 


* Man, in the Past, Present and Future, p. 180. 
ir aAT. 


ECONOMIC CHANCES OF SURVIVAL 543 


did the more numerous gloomy prophecies prior to 1895? And why may 
not great leaders of the colored people rise up in the future, and find 
a way out of all difficult situations, as Booker Washington rose up to 
lead his generation out of the despair of the early days of their free- 
dom? 










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CHAPTER 68 


RACIAL COOPERATION 


Grounds for an Encouraging Outlook—Lines of Endeavor Favoring Survival— 
Need of the Races for More Knowledge of Each Other and More Friendly 
Cooperation—Recent Efforts toward Inter-racial Understanding and Uplift— 
Work of the Y.M.C.A., University Professors, the Commission on Inter- 
racial Cooperation and Other Organizations—Part Played in Uplift by 
Southern White Women 


AKING into consideration the Negro’s natural plasticity, his 

adaptation to the régime of slavery in the New World and his 
rapid transformation in the direction of fitting himself for the condi- 
tions of freedom, there seem to be good grounds for the belief that he 
will be able to adjust himself to whatever situations may arise in the 
future. I believe that his possibilities of achievement are such as to 
justify him in looking forward hopefully to the coming years, and that 
in the effort to realize these possibilities there will be found opportuni- 
ties of sufficient magnitude to call forth general enthusiasm, and be 
worth the while of the best minds of both races. 

The specter of race extinction certainly ought not to terrify a race 
which counts on our globe over 200,000,000 souls. If it be true, as cer- 
tain astronomers and geologists tell us, that some day this earth of ours 
will have radiated its heat, and become a barren mass of matter like the 
moon, then all races are destined to extinction. But that catastrophe is 
too remote to shadow our interest in and enjoyment of the present 
hour; and so the ultimate fate of the Negro, whatever it may be, is too 
remote to repress the Negro’s present-day aspirations. Assuming that 
the Negro will abide with us for an indefinite period, and, at the same 
time, knowing that he will always have great difficulties to overcome, I 
will indicate some of the broad paths of hope which lie immediately 
before him. 

I believe that the greatest hope for the Negro lies in the direction of 
a better understanding of the white people and a greater inclination to 
cooperate with them in a spirit of good faith and friendship; for the 
time is surely coming when there will be a white man or woman avail- 

547 


548 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


able for every job in the United States, and when the opportunities for 
the Negro will depend much more than now upon the white people’s 
good will. There is no danger, however, of the Negro’s ever being 
crowded out provided he can develop proper efficiency, and keep in 
the good graces of the white people. He has nothing to gain and 
everything to lose by intensifying race prejudice, and alienating him- 
self from the sympathy, good will, and helping hand of his white 
neighbor. Both races need a unity of spirit, a hunger for the higher 
things, a disposition to help each other and to rejoice in each other’s 
triumphs. The white man should be able to say to the black man: 
Friend, come up higher. The white man has nothing to gain by keep- 
ing the Negro on a low level of culture, and he is always the loser in 
withholding from the Negro anything which is evidently for the Negro’s 
good. If the Negro can afford to be wronged, the white man cannot 
afford to wrong him. To the extent that the Negro is “kept down,” the 
white man must stay down with him, for as Emerson says: “If I put 
a chain on a slave I fix the other end around my own neck.” The no- 
tion, wide-spread among unthinking white people, that “the Negro’s 
place” is at the social bottom, needs to be got rid of. The “natural 
place” for any race is the highest level to which it is capable of climb- 
ing. But no matter how sincerely both races may desire to promote 
each other’s welfare the problem of racial contact will always call for 
the highest wisdom of both races in safeguarding their respective in- 
terests, and in bringing about equitable and amicable adjustments. 

A prerequisite to good will and codperation between the races is 
that they know and understand each other. Race hatred, as all other 
kinds of hatred, arises in the first place from ignorance of the people we 
hate. As Charles Lamb once remarked, “I can’t hate anyone I know.” 
Now the fact is that the Negro and the white people have been drifting 
further apart since the days of slavery, and know less of each other 
than ever before. 

Under slavery the races knew each other through their intimate per- 
sonal contacts. The domestic slaves, especially, not only had oppor- 
tunity to know the white people, but grew like them in taste, manners, 
disposition, and often in habits and morals. Following the slave rela- 
tionship, the Negroes who worked for the white people as domestic 
servants continued to live in cottages on their former masters’ prem- 
ises. The home life of the Negroes was still under the observation of 
the white people, who continued their oversight of the Negro families, 
lending their personal services in case of sickness or other misfortune, 


RACIAL COOPERATION 540 


Later, the Negro servants ceased to live on the premises of the white 
people, and came to reside in segregated quarters which entirely removed 
them from any intimate observation or familiarity with the whites. But, 
notwithstanding this separation, the white people more or less con- 
tinued to exercise a paternal interest in the family of any Negro who 
worked for them, often sending provisions and clothing for the chil- 
dren, and visiting the family in its afflictions, or sending medical relief. 
Gradually, however, with the development of railroading, mining, and 
manufacturing, where great numbers of Negroes came to work for a 
corporation, and the development of a tenant and landowning class of 
Negroes in the country, all paternal oversight of the Negroes has been 
abandoned, and the relationship of the races has become entirely com- 
mercial and impersonal. 

The diminishing personal contact of the two races has resulted in 
an increasing ignorance and distrust of each for the other, and a grow- 
ing aloofness and mutual animosity. In the North as well as in the 
South the contact of the races has been narrowing. In recent years race 
riots have become more frequent and more widely distributed over the 
country, and wherever these occur, there is always an effort made to 
trace the cause to some rash act of one race or the other. But the fact 
is that all race riots have one and the same origin, and that is race 
hatred. It is a waste of energy to try to discover who made the first 
grimace or threw the first stone. Race riots will always be proportion- 
ate to race antagonisms, and the guilty parties are never they who threw 
the first stones, but they who fan the flames of race hatred. 

The welfare of the Negro and the whites of the United States is 
inseparably bound together, and any degradation or inefficiency of the 
one race will be a handicap to the progress of the other; and any gen- 
eral rise in the culture level of the one will also facilitate a rise in the 
culture level of the other. Therefore, mutual understanding and co- 
operation should be sought in connection with all questions affecting the 
interests of the two races. 

What the Negro needs and wants more than anything else is to be 
rated by the white people for what he is worth. I do not believe that 
the Negroes generally have any desire to enter the social circles of the 
whites, but the educated and cultured class of Negroes feel justly ag- 
grieved when they are no better treated than the Negroes who are thrift- 
less, vicious, and criminal. 

The proneness of the white people to judge all Negroes only by the 
bad ones is due to lack of acquaintance with the educated Negro. Few 


550 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


white people have any idea of the aspiring and striving for better things 
which may be observed in any Negro community. Recently when I 
talked to a Negro literary club, comprising both men and women of 
Oklahoma City, I could not escape the feeling that their earnest striv- 
ing under manifold handicaps, together with their evident longing for 
sympathy and encouragement, was one of the most admirable and, at 
the same time, most pathetic things which one may see on this earth. 


RECENT EFFORTS TOWARD INTER-RACIAL COOPERATION 


The first organized movement since Reconstruction, designed to de- 
velop a more enlightened public opinion on inter-racial matters, was that 
of organizing, through the Y. M. C. A., special classes in colleges and 
universities for the study of the race problem. The leader of this move- 
ment was Dr. W. D. Weatherford, president of the Southern College, 
Nashville, Tennessee, and author of several books on the Negro which 
have been used as texts in these classes. Up to 1924, about 30,000 
white college men and women had enrolled in these Y. M. C. A. courses 
for the study of the Negro problem. 

In addition to this work Dr. Weatherford has held, in connection 
with the Y. M. C. A. summer school at Blue Ridge, North Carolina, 
several conferences of college and university professors on the teach- 
ing of the racial problem in their respective institutions. Dr. Moton of 
Tuskegee, Dr. Fisher of Fisk University, and other representative Ne- 
groes, have lectured at these conferences. 

The pioneer work of Dr. Weatherford in seeking to arouse, among 
educated people, an interest in the race problem, has led to the forma- 
tion of two very important organizations which have become powerful 
factors in educating the public along racial lines, and in promoting inter- 
racial cooperation. 


WORK OF THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS 


The first of these was the Southern Sociological Congress, composed 
of representative Southern men from all walks of life, which has been 
meeting annually for the discussion of social problems especially affect- 
ing the South. At the first meeting of this congress, in Nashville, Ten- 
nessee, May, 1912, there were two sessions dealing with race prob- 
lems, attended by men of both races. The interest in the race problem 
was so great that the congress decided to appoint a permanent com- 
mittee on race relationships. The members of this committee were: 


RACIAL COOPERATION wor 


James H. Dillard, M.A., LL.D., Chairman, New Orleans, Louisiana; 
Rev. J. G. Snedecor, Tuscaloosa, Alabama; A. Trieschmann, Crossett, 
Arkansas; Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, Washington, D. C.; Dr. Lincoln 
Hulley, Leland, Florida; Prof. E. C. Branson, Athens, Georgia; Hon. 
Wm. H. Fleming, Augusta, Georgia; Dr. J. D. Hammond, Augusta, 
Georgia; Miss Belle H. Bennett, Richmond, Kentucky; Rev. John Little, 
Louisville, Kentucky ; Bishop W. P, Thirkield, New Orleans, Louisana; 
G. H. Huckaby, Shreveport, Louisiana; A. H. Stone, Dunleith, Missis- 
sippi; Rev. H. K. Boyer, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Miss Grace 
Biglow House, St. Helena Island, South Carolina; Dr. W. D. Weather- 
ford, Nashville, Tennessee; Bishop W. R. Lambuth, Nashville, Ten- 
nessee ; Dr. George W. Hubbard, Nashville, Tennessee; Rev. A. J. Bar- 
ton, Waco, Texas; Dr. H. B. Frissell, Hampton, Virginia. 

The second meeting of the congress was held in Atlanta, in Decem- 
ber, 1912, and the entire program was devoted to racial questions, and 
later published in book form under the title, The Human Way. The 
program of the Atlanta meeting was in part as follows: 

“The Present Situation,’ James H. Dillard, M.A., LL.D. 

“How to Enlist the Welfare Agencies of the South for Improvement 
of Conditions Among the Negroes,’ W. D. Weatherford, Ph.D. 

“Work of the Commission of Southern Universities on the Race 
Question,’ Governor C. H. Brough, Ph.D. 

“The Negro Working Out His Own Salvation,” Prof. E. C. Bran- 
son, A.M. 

“Desirable Civic Reforms in the Treatment of the Negro,’ Prof. W. 
me ocrores.; Ph.D): | 

“Tnter-Racial Interests in Industry,” Principal R. R. Moton. 

At the sub-meetings of the congress representative men and women 
of both races have met and talked over a variety of matters of common 
interest. 


WORK OF THE UNIVERSITY COMMISSION 


During the first meeting of the Southern Sociological Congress there 
was effected an organization known as the University Commission on 
Southern Race Problems, made up of professors in Southern univer- 
sities. The initial members were: 

James J. Doster, University of Alabama; C. H. Brough, University 
of Arkansas; James M. Farr, University of Florida; R. J. H. De- 
Loach, University of Georgia; W. O. Scroggs, Louisiana State Univer- 
sity; W. D. Hedleston, University of Mississippi; Charles W. Bain, 


552 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


University of North Carolina; Josiah Morse, University of South Caro- 
lina; James D. Hoskins, University of Tennessee; W. S. Sutton, Uni- 
versity of Texas; William M. Hunley, University of Virginia. 

Meetings have been held from time to time, and all phases of the 
race problem have been studied. 

The commission has issued several open letters to the college men 
of the South, covering such subjects as Lynching, Education, Migra- 
tion, and the New Reconstruction. The following are extracts from 
these letters: . 

Lynching 

“This letter is not written to convince you that lynching is a crime, 
for you know it already. Its object is to urge you to show others 
whenever opportunity presents itself that lynching does more than rob 
its victims of their constitutional rights and of their lives. It simul- 
taneously lynches law and justice and civilization, and outrages all the 
finer human sentiments and feelings. 

“The wrong that it does to the wretched victims is almost as noth- 
ing compared to the injury it does to the lynchers themselves, to the 
community, and to society at large. 

“Lynching is a contagious social disease, and as such is of deep 
concern to every American citizen and to every lover of civilization. It 
is especially of concern to you, and you can do much to abolish it. Vice 
and crime know that their best, though unconscious and unwilling allies, 
are luke-warmness and timidity on the part of educated, ‘good’ citi- 
zens. Wrong is weaker than right, and musi yield whenever right is 
persistent and determined. 

“Tt is, of course, no argument in favor of lynching, nor can we de- 
rive any legitimate satisfaction from the fact that it is not confined to 
any one section of our country and that the victims are not always black. 
One of the bad features of lynching is that it quickly becomes a habit, 
and, like all bad habits, deepens and widens rapidly. Formerly lynch- 
ings were mainly incited by rape and murder, but the habit has spread 
until now such outrages are committed for much less serious crimes. 

“The records of lynching for 1914, compiled by three different 
agencies, give the total number for the year at 52, 54, and 74, the author- 
ity for these figures being Tuskegee Institute, the Chicago Tribune, and 
the Crisis, respectively. 

“The conflicting reports cannot be harmonized, but, to avoid any 
possibility of exaggeration, we may employ the most conservative of 
these for analysis. 


RACIAL COOPERATION 503 





“It reveals these facts: Number lynched—colored: male 46, female 
3; white: male 3, female o. Total 52.” 


Education 


“In its first open letter to college men of the South, issued at the 
beginning of the present year, (1916) the University Commission 
urged them to unite their efforts with those of the press, the pulpit, 
the bar, the officers of the law, and all other agencies laboring for the 
elimination of the monster evil of mob violence. These agencies have 
labored diligently and with substantial results, as is indicated by the 
decrease of the average annual number of lynchings from 171 for the 
decade 1886-1895 to 70 for the decade 1g06-1915. Nevertheless, the 
commission wishes to reiterate its appeal with renewed emphasis, know- 
ing that the eradication of so virulent a social disease as the lynching 
mania can be effected only by the prolonged and vigorous efforts of 
sane and patriotic citizens. 

“In this letter the Commission wishes to direct the attention of the 
college men to the educational aspect of the race question, inasmuch as 
the solution of all human problems ultimately rests upon rightly directed 
education. In its last analysis, education simply means bringing forth 
all the native capacities of the individual for the benefit both of himself 
and of society. It is axiomatic that a developed plant, animal, or man 
is far more valuable to society than the undeveloped. It is likewise 
obvious that ignorance is the most fruitful source of human ills. Fur- 
thermore, it is as true in a social as in a physical sense that a chain 
is no stronger than its weakest link. The good results thus far obtained, 
as shown by the Negro’s progress within recent years, prompt the 
Commission to urge the extension of his educational opportunities. 

“The inadequate provision for the education of the Negro is more 
than an injustice to him; it is an injury to the white man. The South 
cannot realize its destiny if one-third of its population is undeveloped 
and inefficient. For our common welfare we must strive to cure dis- 
ease wherever we find it, strengthen whatever is weak, and develop 
all that is undeveloped. The initial steps for increasing the efficiency 
and usefulness of the Negro race must necessarily be taken 1n the school 
room. There can be no denying that more and better schools, with 
better trained and better paid teachers, more adequate supervision and 
longer terms, are needed for the blacks, as well as the whites. The 
Negro schools are, of course, parts of the school systems of their re- 
spective states, and as such share in the progress and prosperity of 


554 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


their state systems. Our appeal is for a larger share for the Negro, 
on the ground of the common welfare and common justice. He is the 
weakest link in our civilization, and our welfare is indissolubly bound 
up with his. 

“Many means are open to the college men of the South for arousing 
greater public interest in this matter, and for promoting a more vigorous 
public effort to this end. A right attitude in this, as in all other impor- 
tant public questions, is a condition precedent to success. For this 
reason the Commission addresses to Southern college men this special 
appeal.” 


A New Reconstruction 


“The world-wide reconstruction that is following in the wake of the 
war will necessarily affect the South in a peculiar way. Nearly 300,000 
Negroes have been called into the military service of the country ; many 
thousands more have been drawn from peaceful pursuits into industries 
born of the war; and several hundred thousand have shifted from the 
South to the industrial districts of the North. The demobilization of 
the army and the transition of industry from a war to a peace basis 
are creating many problems which can be solved only by the efforts of 
both races. The Negro, in adapting himself to the new conditions, 
should have the wise sympathy and generous cooperation of his white 
neighbors. It is to the interest of these, as well as of the Negro him- 
self, that readjustment should proceed with the least possible difficulty 
and delay. 

“We believe that this readjustment may be effectively aided by a 
more general appreciation of the Negro’s value as a member of the 
community. Lack of sympathy and understanding between two groups 
of people frequently causes one group to regard the shortcomings of 
a few individuals of the other as characteristic of all that group. This 
is a natural tendency, but it is neither rational nor just, and it has 
proved, we believe, one of the great obstacles to the development of 
more satisfactory racial relations in this country. 

“The Negro’s contribution to the welfare of the nation has never 
been more clearly indicated than by his services during the Great War. 
When the call to arms was sounded his country expected him to do 
his duty, and he did not fail. Large numbers of black men on the fields 
of France made the supreme sacrifice for the cause of world democracy. 
Tn other war services the Negroes did their full share. Many thou- 


RACIAL COOPERATION 555 


sands were employed in the building of ships, the manufacture of 
munitions, the construction of cantonments, and in the production of 
the coal, iron, cotton, and food stuffs without which victory would 
have been impossible. The Negroes’ purchases of Liberty Bonds and 
War Savings Stamps, and their contributions to the Red Cross, the 
United War Work Fund, and other similar agencies are in themselves 
a splendid record of which the Negroes and their white friends may 
be justly proud. 

“It may also be appropriate in this connection to recall that through- 
out the period of hostilities the Negro was never suspected of espionage 
or of sympathy with the enemy, and that he has been wholly indifferent 
to those movements fostered by radical aliens that aim at the destruc- 
tion of the American form of government. This good record of the 
whole race deserves such publicity as will offset the common tendency 
to judge it by the shortcomings of some of its members. No people is 
spurred to higher things when habitually referred to in disparaging or 
contemptuous terms. Ordinary human beings tend to live up to or 
down to the role assigned them by their neighbors.” 


WORK OF THE COMMISSION ON INTER-RACIAL 
COOPERATION 


A third organization of recent development is the Commission on 
Inter-Racial Cooperation, which seems to have grown out of the spirit 
of unrest among the Negroes in the United States following the World 
War. The situation suggested to the minds of several prominent re- 
ligious workers the idea of a conference to devise some means by which 
better relations between the races might be established. 

In furtherance of this idea, a conference was held in Atlanta in 
1919, attended by men and women from all sections of the country. 
After a general discussion of the situation the conference issued the 
following proclamation: 

“We, a group of Christians, deeply interested in the welfare of our 
entire community, irrespective of race or class distinction, and frankly 
facing the many evidences of racial unrest, which in some places have 
already culminated in terrible tragedies, would call the people of our 
own beloved community to a calm consideration of our situation before 
extremists are allowed to create a condition where reason is impossible. 
In no spirit of alarmists, but with the clear vision of earnest men, 


550 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


conscious of the responsibility which a Christian democracy imposes 
upon self-reasoning and self-governing citizens, let us strive to meet 
our obligations in the spirit of Jesus Christ... . 

“We do not believe that there is any one statement which we may 
make, or any one act which we may perform which will solve all the 
supremely difficult and delicate problems that face us, but we are 
confident that by conferences conducted by leaders of both races, coming 
together in the spirit of Jesus Christ, there will be an atmosphere of 
mutual confidence and wisdom out of which shall come plans and enter- 
prises for the righting of wrongs, and the creation of fair and just 
opportunities for even the least of our brethren.” 

The idea of calling together representative men of both races to 
discuss their differences met with an enthusiastic response from the 
thinking public, and led to the formation of an Inter-Racial Commission 
whose purpose has been to bring about racial cooperation throughout 
the Southern states. The Y. M. C. A. appropriated money to finance 
the work of the Commission and furnished the leaders to direct the 
work. The commission has headquarters at Atlanta, Georgia, and the 
officers are: Dr. M. Ashby Jones, chairman; R. H. King, chairman 
executive committee; Will W. Alexander, director; Mrs. Maud P. 
Henderson, woman’s work; Robert B. Eleazer, educational director ; 
Dr. T. J. Woofter, Jr., research secretary; David D. Jones, general 
field secretary ; field staff, Dr. James Bond, Louisville, Kentucky; J. D. 
Burton, Oakdale, Tennessee; R. W. Miles, Richmond, Virginia; Clark 
Foreman, Atlanta, Georgia; Mrs. Jesse Daniel Ames, Georgetown, 
Texas; Mrs. C. P. McGowan, Charleston, South Carolina. 

The commission has established in each Southern state a general 
committee on inter-racial cooperation, composed of about twenty-five 
members, equally divided between the races. This state committee has 
general direction of all matters involving race relationships. It appoints 
two general state secretaries, one from each race, who are paid salaries, 
and required to give all of their time to organizing county inter-racial 
committees, and to initiating plans and programs for the promotion of 
the mutual welfare of the races. 

The work of the county inter-racial committee varies according 
to local needs. The activities of the committee have to do mostly with 
such matters as justice in the courts, repression of mobs, better school 
facilities, adequate libraries, parks, the improvement of sanitary condi- 
tions, etcetera. The county committee cooperates with the county and 
city governments, the boards of education, the superintendent of 


RACIAL COOPERATION 557 


education, chamber of commerce, churches, and other organizations 
which might be helpful in any program of common welfare. 

From the headquarters of the Inter-racial Commission in Atlanta, 
handbooks and pamphlets are sent to the state inter-racial commissions, 
and to the county inter-racial committees, offering suggestions as to what 
to do, and giving information as to what has been and is being done 
throughout the South for the betterment of the Negro population.* 

The state commissions and the state secretaries generally look after 
the interests of the Negro in reference to state institutions, such as 
industrial schools, schools for the deaf and blind, normal and industrial 
schools, common schools, and high schools, and also in reference to 
adequate appropriations by the state legislatures for the support of these 
institutions. 

About 800 county inter-racial committees have been organized and 
are functioning. The work of these committees may be illustrated by 
citing a few examples of what has been accomplished. 

In Breathitt county, Kentucky, the inter-racial committee prevailed 
upon the county authorities to erect at the county seat an adequate 
schoolhouse for the Negroes at a cost of $7,000. In Graves county, 
Kentucky, the committee created a public sentiment which resulted in 
the erection of a high school for the colored people at Mayfield, costing 
$25,000. In Louisville the committee and state secretary assisted in 
raising $40,000 among the white people for Simmons University, a 
colored institution. 

In Tennessee the state committee and state secretary were active 
in getting a legislative appropriation of $100,000 for the colored A. and 
M. College, making available $220,000 more in conditional gifts from 
other sources. 

In Virginia the inter-racial committees have assisted in clearing 
Manassas Industrial School from debt by raising $28,000. 

In various states the inter-racial committees have cooperated with 
the local authorities in the establishment of high schools for Negroes, 
of public libraries, day nurseries, playgrounds, hospitals, and clinics. 

In Hopkins county, Kentucky, the committee succeeded in averting 
the lynching of a Negro who had murdered the sheriff of the county. 
A mob gathered at Madisonville, where the Negro was jailed, and not 
only threatened to lynch the murderer but to burn the colored section 
of the town. The colored members of the committee agreed to offer 

1 Handbook for Inter-racial Committees, by Edwin Mims; Codperation in ° 
Southern Communities, by T. J. Woofter, Jr., and Isaac Fisher. 


558 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

poy tbh neh AALS at a aa kann lh doesn eet oan a pa ee 
a reward for the arrest and conviction of the murderer. They imme- 
diately had struck off hundreds of hand-bills, signed by representative 
Negroes of the region, regretting the killing of Sheriff Hunter, who 
was known to be especially friendly to the colored people, and distributed 
those among the angry threatening mob. The effect was immediate, 
for when these white men saw the attitude of the colored citizens, and 
were convinced they had no sympathy for the lawless element among 
their race, the mob quietly dispersed, and Hopkins county and the State 
of Kentucky were saved the disgrace of a lynching, and possibly the 
loss of lives and homes of innocent colored people. The Negro was 
subsequently arrested, tried at Madisonville without any disturbance 
whatever, convicted, and electrocuted. The Negroes of the community 
paid their proffered reward, refusing assistance from their white 
friends, who, moved by their upholding of law and order, wished to help 
them. 

The Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation is fortunate in having 
as its director Will W. Alexander, a man of rare vision, initiative, and 
tact. 

WORK OF THE SOUTHERN CLERGYMEN 


The Inter-racial Commission has been instrumental in stimulating 
the religious organizations of the South to take a more active and prac- 
tical interest in the welfare of the Negro. At the request of the 
commission, three of its members, Rt. Rev. Theodore D. Bratton, 
Bishop of Mississippi; Dr. William L. Poteat, president of Wake 
Forest College, and Dr. R. E. Blackwell, president of Randolph-Macon 
College, issued invitations to representative clergymen of the Protestant 
Churches in the South to attend a conference on inter-racial codpera- 
tion at Blue Ridge, North Carolina, in August, 1920. The conference 
was largely attended and, after a general discussion, issued an appeal 
to the Christian people as follows: 

“We, a group of white Christian men and women of the South, 
absolutely loyal to the best traditions and convictions of the South, 
and especially to the principle of racial integrity, voluntarily assembled 
upon the invitations of the Commission on Inter-racial Codperation, 
and after prayerful and careful consideration of prevailing inter-racial 
relations and conditions, do deliberately declare it to be our profound 
conviction that the real responsibility for the solution of inter-racial 
problems in the South rests directly upon the hearts and consciences 
of the Christian forces of our land. 


RACIAL COOPERATION Ae) 


“We are also persuaded that the best method by which to approach 
the consideration and solution of such problems is through local organ- 
izations, composed of the recognized Christian leaders of both races, 
organizations similar to the Christian Council formed and functioning 
so effectively under the inter-racial Christian leadership of Atlanta, 
Georgia. 

“Tt is a matter of common knowledge that grave injustices are often 
suffered by members of the Negro race in matters of legal procedure, 
traveling facilities, educational facilities, the public press, domestic 
service, child welfare and in other relations of life. Therefore, we 
venture to make the following observations and suggestions: 

“We unhesitatingly declare lynching to be a crime against the 
honor of our nation. We rejoice to know that many Southern goy- 
ernors and other Christian leaders have taken very high ground on 
this question and have by their attitude and action reduced the crime 
of lynching in their respective states. We believe the Christian people 
of the South are unalterably opposed to this savage practice. We, 
therefore, recommend that the pulpit, in the religious press and denom- 
inational literature, and in every other possible way, the Christian _ 
forces of the South unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly condemn and 
oppose all mob violence, and that the voice of our united Christian 
effort be steadfastly raised in the defense of the sacredness of life and 
of law and order. 

“In the matter of legal justice, we urge our ministers and laymen 
throughout the South, by frequent visitation, to keep in close touch 
with the administration of justice in their local courts, particularly in 
the petit courts. In this connection we express the hope that “Legal 
Aid Societies’ will be formed in all cities and larger towns, and that 
the service of competent lawyers will be enlisted by such Legal Aid 
Societies to the end that the poor and the unprivileged of all races shall 
have justice. 

“We recommend that the ministry and leaders of the local churches 
of both races co-operate in the promotion of local Inter-Racial Com- 
mittees for the purpose of securing better inter-racial relations to the 
end that peace and justice may be observed for all.” 

The Rev. John Little, the son of a slave-owner, has been conducting, 
for fourteen or more years, a mission for religious and social service 
among the Negroes of Louisville, Kentucky. 


560 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


WORK OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES IN CHRIST 


In 1921 the Federal Council of the Churches in Christ, acting upon 
appeals from the Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation, created a 
commission on Negro churches and race relations, and the first meeting 
of the commission was held in Washington, July, 1922. It was pre- 
sided over by John Eagan of Atlanta. Dr. Robert E. Speer, as president 
of the council, explained the influences that had led to the creation 
of the commission and focused attention on the fundamental contri- 
bution which the Christian churches, committed to the Gospel of 
brotherhood and to the method of cooperation, can make toward the 
solution of this problem. Dr. W. W. Alexander, director of the Com- 
mission on Inter-racial Cooperation, and Professor Isaac Fisher of 
Fisk University told of the far-reaching work which has been carried 
on by that body through establishing local inter-racial committees in 
the great majority of communities in the South. Mrs. Luke Johnson, 
of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, spoke upon the new interest of Southern church women 
in the racial question. Professor John R. Hawkins, financial secretary 
of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, opened the discussion 
of the work which the Federal Council’s commission should do. 
Others, colored and white, took part in the discussion. 

At the conclusion of the meeting the following statement of the 
purposes of the commission was unanimously adopted: 

“The Christian conception of God and man constrains us to believe 
whole-heartedly that the races should and can live together in mutual 
helpfulness and good-will, each making its own contribution to the 
richness of the human family as a whole and cooperating with the 
others in seeking the common good. 

“We, therefore, set forth the following as the purposes which this 
Commission will seek to serve: 

“tT. To assert the sufficiency of Christianity as the solution of race 
relations in America and the duty of the Churches and all their organ- 
izations to give the most careful attention to this question. 

“2. To provide a central clearing-house and meeting-place for the 
Churches and for all Christian agencies dealing with the relation of 
the white and negro races, and to encourage and support their activities 
along this line. 

“3. To promote mutual confidence and acquaintance, both nationa!ly 
and locally, between the white and Negro Churches, especially by state 


RACIAL COOPERATION S61 


and local conferences between white and Negro ministers, Christian 
educators and other leaders, for the consideration of their common 
problems. 

“4. To array the sentiment of the Christian Churches against mob 
violence and to enlist their thorough-going support in a special program 
of education on the subject for a period of at least five years. 

“s. To secure and distribute accurate knowledge of the facts re- 
garding racial relations and racial attitudes in general, and regarding 
particular situations that may be under discussion from time to time. 

“6. To develop a public conscience which will secure to the Negro 
equitable provision for education, health, housing, recreation and all 
other aspects of community welfare. 

“7 To make more widely known in the Churches the work and 
principles of the Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation, and espe- 
cially to support its efforts to establish local inter-racial committees. 

“8. To secure the presentation of the problem of race relations 
and of the Christian solution by white and Negro speakers at as many 
church gatherings as possible throughout the country.” 

The Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation, which carries on its 
work mostly through local organizations, has brought about notable 
results in Nashville and Atlanta. 

At Nashville, the Commercial Club appointed a committee on race 
relationship, cornposed of representative men of different occupations, 
and the Negro leaders of the city appointed a like committee to co- 
operate with the committee of the whites. Joint meetings of the two 
committees were held, and five sub-committees were appointed as fol- 
lows: 

I. On justice in city and county courts. 

2. On uniform and impartial enforcement of the street-car laws. 

3. On handling by newspapers of the news relating to Negroes. 

4. On the improvement in equipment and in equality of teachers 
in Negro schools. 

5. On parks, playgrounds, and general living conditions. 

The joint committee also employed a special lawyer to look after the 
general status of the Negroes in the courts. 

The sub-committees have brought about many changes for the bet- 
terment of the Negroes. The efficiency of Negro schools has been 
improved, the press of the city, which formerly had made reference to 
Negroes only in connection with crime, began to print news of Negro 
activities in business, education, religion, and other lines of worthy 


562 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


endeavor, an additional public park was provided for the Negroes, and 
so on. When a drive was started for an increased endowment for 
Fisk University, the Commercial Club got behind it by appointing a com- 
mittee to go to New York to aid in the campaign, and Governor Rob- 
erts, and Chancellor Kirkland of Vanderbilt University accompanied the 
committee and made addresses in behalf of the endowment. 

In Atlanta in January, 1916, there was organized a commission on 
church codperation made up of representatives of the ministry and 
laity of the Evangelical denominations. This commission appointed a 
special committee on racial relationship and invited the Negro ministers 
of the city to appoint a like committee. These respective committees of 
the two races have held joint meetings, and worked together for better 
race relations and better conditions for the Negro. As a result of their 
joint effort a high school has been established for the Negroes, the 
salaries of Negro teachers have been increased, a public park has been 
established, and better transportation accommodations secured, etcetera. 
The original commission on church cooperation has been reorganized 
into the Christian Council, which cooperates with a duplicate Negro 
council. 


PART PLAYED IN UPLIFT BY SOUTHERN WHITE WOMEN 


The white women of the South, through their clubs, churches and 
other organizations, have been spending a great amount of money, and 
giving personal services of a manifold kind for the uplift of the colored 
population. Everything which they have attempted to do has been 
done by personal contact and cooperation with the colored women. 

Back in 1885 the white women of Atlanta held prayer meetings with 
colored women throughout the city in behalf of carrying the prohibition 
election. About the same time, which was during the worst days of the 
Georgia convict camps, the white women made and won a fight for the 
proper segregation and protection of colored women prisoners.? 

The white women of the Southern Methodist Church, through their 
Missionary Council, have been supporting an industrial department for 
girls in a school established by their church for the training of colored 
ministers and teachers. They have also been supporting a social settle- 
ment for colored people in Augusta, Georgia, and another at Nashville, 
Tennessee, and the directors of each are men and women of both races. 

The Methodist women render service in colored Sunday schools, 

*Hammond, Southern Women and Racial Adjustment, p. 9. 


RACIAL COOPERATION 563 


promote colored missionary societies, school betterment, recreational 
facilities, and especially the formation of, and codperation with, colored 
women’s community clubs for betterment along all lines.° 

In reference to the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Presbyterian Church, 
Mrs. W. C. Winsborough of St. Louis writes, under date of January 
19, 1926, as follows: 

“The earliest work of our church for the negro was the founding 
of Stillman Institute for the training of negro preachers at Tuscaloosa, 
Ala., fifty years ago. This Institution was founded by Dr. Stillman who 
realized the great need of training an educated ministry for the spiritual 
leadership of the negro race. The attendance of this school has been 
inter-denominational and we have sent out more ministers to other de- 
nominations than to our own, but several have been in the missionary 
work in Africa and others are leaders in the ministry in our own as 
well as other denominations. 

“About five years ago the plan at Stillman was changed to include a 
school for girls, a large brick dormitory being built for this purpose. 
The men in Stillman have always been able to earn their way through 
the school by working on the large farm which is attached to the In- 
stitution. The girls’ instruction is also industrial as well as literary. 
We have there now about two hundred and fifty students, boys and 
girls, and about fifteen candidates for the ministry. We now have a 
dairy in connection with the school, and a machine shop. The standards 
of the school have been raised this year to include two years of college 
work and next year, it will be a standard four-year college. 

“Our church has forty-two negro churches whose ministers are 
largely supported by the Home Missions department of our church, 
Their membership numbers one thousand three hundred and eight. 

“One of the most outstanding pieces of work which has been done by 
our church is the establishment of Conferences for Colored Women by 
the women of our church. The first of these was established ten years 
ago at Tuscaloosa, Ala. Representative colored women from surround- 
ing States are called together for one week, for study of the Bible, of 
social conditions, and of better ways of living, play-ground work, sew- 
ing school, nursing and other practical betterment plans.” 

The first wife of President Wilson, when a young girl and art 
student in New York, sought out a colored Sunday-school and taught 
there during her two years’ stay in that city. At Meridian, Mississippi, 
the white women conduct a Bible teachers’ class and a story teller’s 


> Hammond, Southern Women and Racial Adjustment, p. 11- 


504 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

league for colored people. In Uniontown, Alabama, the Presbyterian 
white women have been visiting Negro homes and reading the Bible 
to the colored sick and aged.* 

The Southern Baptist women have carried on a number of industrial 
schools for colored children in Baltimore.® In Texas and other states. 
they cooperate with the colored people in missionary programs. 

The women of the Episcopal Church aid, in various ways, the work 
of the General Board of Missions of their church in the support of par- 
ish schools for Negroes.® 

Student conferences attended by both white and colored women are 
held annually in the South under the auspices of the Y. W. C, A." 

The Southern club women concern themselves with nearly every 
phase of social welfare and their work has brought them into frequent 
contact and cooperation with the colored people. In their programs of 
civic betterment they have found the colored women ever ready to co- 
operate. The women of the two races have often worked jointly in 
campaigns for cleaning streets and alleys, for removing resorts of vice, 
and for other civic improvements. 

The club women of Baltimore have a committee on work for col- 
ored people, and employ as secretary a trained colored woman who is 
a graduate of Hampton. The committee concerns itself with health, 
housing, school attendance, and other interests of the Negro population. 
Among other things it supports a day nursery. In Mississippi the white 
club women frequently go to Negro schools and give health talks.® 
In Alabama the federated club women support a colored farm demon- 
strator and a colored woman to organize canning clubs.? In Georgia 
the club women support moonlight schools to eradicate illiteracy among 
both races,?° and pay the salary of an organizer of Junior Leagues in 
the public schools of both races. In Jacksonville, Florida, the club 
women employ four public nurses for the colored districts." 

The club women of Atlanta have conducted a cooking school for 
colored women and girls, intended for colored home-makers, and not 
for training cooks for white people. 

*Hammond, Southern Women and Ractal Adjustment, p. 13. 

°Ibid., p. 14. 

*Ibid., p. 15. 

"Tbid., p. 16. 

*Tbid., p. 24. 

*Tbid., p. 24. 

dation OL 2A: 

“1 bd.) 0) 25, 


RACIAL COOPERATION 565 


In Augusta, Georgia, the club women have interested themselves 
in a reformatory for colored children, playgrounds, sanitation, etcetera. 

Several years ago the women of Birmingham put on a campaign to 
clean up the Negro slums and the public interest aroused in the matter 
led the city to erect there a $60,000 industrial school which has trans- 
formed the entire neighborhood. 


CHAPTER 69 
RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 


Necessity for Effective Codperation of Inter-Racial Understanding on the Social 
Question—Variations of the Color Line under Different Conditions of Race 
Contact—The Natural Tendency of Unlike Races to Live Apart—Contrast 
Between the Northern and Southern Negroes on the Social Question— 
Tighter Drawing of the Color Life Resulting from Agitation against It— 
Hope of Mutual Understanding on the Social Question and of Increasing 
Inter-Racial Cooperation. 


HE first step in the direction of effective cooperation is to arrive 

at a mutual understanding upon the fundamental question of racial 

relationships about which there is at present a great amount of confusion 
and misunderstanding. 

The extent of racial contact varies with the varying ratio of Negroes 
to whites in each state. In consequence of these varying extents of 
contact the customs and conventions governing race relations are more 
or less different in each locality. It is not at all surprising, therefore, 
that whites and blacks in different sections of our country have different 
ideas as to what the race relationships should be. 

Let us now analyze these different customs and conventions in the 
different geographical areas and see if we can discover in them some 
underlying principle which the whites and blacks might agree upon as a 
basis of racial adjustment for all localities. 

To begin with let us take an example of a community of white 
people where there is no color line in public places. 

Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor, a colored man, while living in 
Atlanta, Georgia, went on a trip to the Holy Land and, in writing an 
account of this trip, said: “I was again surprised when I found diffi- 
culty in securing passage with touring parties on account of race prej- 
udice, although I applied to companies in Boston as well as in New 
York. The problem was solved by the purchase of an independent 
teeta co 

“After the difficulty in securing my passage I presumed I would 
be ill-treated on shipboard. Contrary to this I was treated with the 


highest courtesy from the captain to the humblest steward on ship- 
566 


RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 567 





board during the twenty-nine days I sailed on the Franconia. I sat 
at the captain’s table, and a French woman sat on one side of me and 
a German on the other. 

“I wondered before leaving if I should not get lonely for people 
of my own color. To my surprise I saw colored people everywhere. 
I saw a young colored man playing on the gambling tables at Monte 
Carlo. One sees people of all colors in Cairo. The man who drove 
my carriage to the Jordan was jet black. The priest presiding at the 
Greek church in Tiberias was of pure ebony. I met a colored man 
from Virginia in Geneva. There were many colored people in Bel- 
gium. Tall black men stood at the doors of the beer gardens in Berlin. 
Colored people are plentiful in Paris. They seem to be at home in 
London. Since three-fourths of mankind belong to the colored races 
it ought not to be surprising to find colored people all over the world. 
As a matter of fact I was often taken for an American Indian, an 
East Indian, an Egyptian, and what not. 

“Although I did find colored people everywhere, I found the color 
line nowhere. As the skyline of New York faded out the color line 
faded with it. I traveled for fifteen thousand miles in the Old World 
and I saw nothing of racial discrimination during that time. On the 
other hand my color was an attraction, instead of a detraction. At 
Corfu, Greece, I was mistaken for a king, being the only colored man 
on board.’ ? 

Now, since the Rev. Mr. Proctor found no color line in England, 
should he conclude that the Englishman is a superior type of white man 
who has risen above color prejudice? On a moment’s reflection he 
would be obliged to answer in the negative, for he would recall the 
fact that where native Englishmen came in contact with large masses 
of colored people as in Australia, South Africa, or Jamaica, the color 
line is drawn there just as it is in Georgia. By inquiry he would learn 
that a Chinaman boarding a British liner for his native country would 
have to pay double price, for the reason that the state-rooms accom- 
modate two persons and no Englishman will occupy a room with a 
Chinaman. 

If colored men were as rare in the Southern United States as in 
England or Continental Europe, and if Keverend Mr. Proctor were 
touring the South, would he not be able to write back to his people 
in New York and tell them that he found no color line in public places 
and that his color was an attraction instead of a detraction? 

* Proctor, Between Black and White, pp. 145-6. 


568 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


In New York, where Reverend Mr. Proctor now lives, he finds that 
the colored people are not segregated to the same extent as in Georgia, 
that there are no separate schools, or jim-crow railway or street cars. 
Yet he is too intelligent a man to suppose that this difference is due to 
anything more than the fact that the Negro population in New York is 
relatively smaller than in Georgia. 

If he were acquainted with the history of New York he would 
know that the color line was drawn in New York city as in any South- 
ern community when in 1740 the Negroes constituted a considerable 
proportion of the population. 

These facts ought to suggest the truth that the reaction of the white 
man to the colored man is about the same everywhere under similar 
conditions of contact. 

I-verywhere in the United States the white people draw the color 
line to whatever extent is practicable to avoid an undesirable frequency 
or intimacy of contact, and nowhere is there any free intermingling 
of whites and blacks except in dens of vice. 

A general recognition of the fact that the attitude of the white peo- 
ple toward racial intermingling is substantially the same in all of the 
states would go a long way toward terminating a discussion which 
serves only to inflame the passions of both races. 

The second step in the direction of effective inter-racial coOpera- 
tion is to arrive at an understanding as to why there is a color line be- 
tween the whites and blacks in the United States or elsewhere. 

I think the colored people generally have a very wrong idea of the 
reason for this color line. They are aware of the fact that their race 
as a whole is yet backward in culture, and that many white people dis- 
play a contempt for any man with a dark skin. They, therefore, con- 
clude that the white people draw the color line only because they be- 
lieve the Negro race to be an inferior one. In Chapter 54 I have tried 
to make plain that the extent of social intermingling between races de- 
pends primarily upon their degree of visible likeness, and not upon their 
natural capacity or their culture. 

Races in contact which differ in any marked degree tend to keep 
themselves socially apart for reasons which are no discredit to them, 
and which grow out of their consciousness of kind and their natural 
and ineradicable preference for intimate association with their own 
kind. The feeling of likeness which draws the members of a race to- 
gether results in a racial tradition and a pride of achievement which 


RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 569 


intensify their natural gregarious tendency. Hence, although it may 
be that most white people do regard the Negro as inferior, the funda- 
mental cause of the color line, nevertheless, is that the two races are 
incompatible because of their unlikeness. For example, while the 
white people of California admire the Japanese for their capability and 
achievements, they tend to draw away from them socially as the white 
people of Mississippi draw away from the Negro; and, if the Japanese 
preponderated in the population of California as the Negro preponder- 
ates in Mississippi, the color line would probably be as rigidly drawn 
in the former state as in the latter. 

Physical difference, together with pride of tradition, tends more or 
less to separate all races, and the degree of separateness depends upon 
the degree of difierence. The main idea to grasp is that in cases where 
the separateness is complete, or where it is partial or varying, there need 
be no lack of mutual respect, good feeling, and cooperation. 

A recognition of the fact that the social segregation of white and 
black in the United States is due primarily to their unlikeness, and that 
the segregating tendency is natural to both races, would have the happy 
effect of removing from the mind of the Negro the idea that the white 
man’s part in the segregation is due to a race hatred or to a culpable 
race prejudice. 

When we come to an understanding on the social question we can 
turn our energies to the important and practical task of establishing cus- 
toms, standards, and institutions which will insure to both races fair 
opportunities under the varying conditions of race contact in the dif- 
ferent sections of the United States. Our ideal should be, not a régime 
of castes, but one of parallel culture with opportunity for each race to 
flower according to its genius. 

Would it be possible to win the whole-hearted adherence of the 
white and colored people of our country to an ideal of this kind? Many 
people of both races doubt it. Some colored people regard the issue of 
breaking down the social barriers as paramount, and on this issue ac- 
cept no compromise. And some white people are skeptical of the sin- 
cerity of those colored people who profess to have no desire for white 
society. 

Back in 1896, when Booker Washington said that the races could 
be as separate as the fingers in social matters and one as the hand in 
all that is essential to the welfare of each, a large section of the 
Northern Negroes denounced this figure of speech as a compromise. 


570 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





And, when President Harding used substantially the same figure in his 
Birmingham speech, October 26, 1921, a similar chorus of protests arose 
from the Negroes of the North. 

William Archer, the English student of our race problem, does not 
believe that the Negroes who profess indifference to social separation 
are sincere; he thinks that they hope by insisting upon social contact 
to wear down the white man’s race-pride and force him finally to ac- 
cept amalgamation. He quotes the statement of the Negro Kelly 
Miller that “two races cannot live indefinitely side by side, under the 
same general régime, without ultimately fusing,’ and adds the comment 
that between looking forward to amalgamation as inevitable and hoping 
and dreaming for it is not greatly different. 

Professor Reuter remarks that: “The desire of the mixed-blood 
man is always and everywhere to be a white man; to be classed with 
and become a part of the superior race.” ” 

In reference to the question of social intermingling with the whites, 
Professor Reuter notes the contrast of attitude between the Negro 
leaders of the North and South. 

He tells us that in the South: “The bi-racial arrangement—the sep- 
aration of the Negroes from the whites and their independence in many 
of the affairs of life—created a need and supplied a place for the su- 
periorameniiofiithewace. »t 

“To the extent that the races became separated and the Negroes 
gained in independence and developed a sense of racial pride and self- 
reliance, there was a place for an educated class within the race; there 
was a need for teachers and preachers, for physicians and lawyers, for 
business men and entertainers, and for all the host of other parasitic 
and semi-parasitic classes that go to make up a modern community. 
With the rise of a middle-class, the race was able to support a profes- 
sional and leisure class; previously the educated Negro was an idler 
and a parasite. The isolation of the race forced the Negroes to de- 
pend upon their own educated men and so made a place for such men.’ 

“The separation of the races freed the Negro professional and 
business men from the competition of the better trained and more effi- 
cient white men and consequently gave them an opportunity to rise out 
of all proportion to their native ability and training. The plane of com~ 
petition became one on which they could hope to succeed. The older— 
the slave and reconstruction plan of adjustment—was an accommodation 


* Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States, p. 315. 
*Tbid., p. 350. 


RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT S71 


on horizontal lines. The white man was at the top, the black man was 
at the bottom. It was a caste distinction that prevented the rise of the 
capable individual out of his group. In the newer arrangement, the 
opportunity to rise was limited only by the ability and the industry of 
the individual man. There was no superior caste above him. 

“As has been previously pointed out in detail, the superior men of 
the race are, with scarcely the proverbial exception, mulattoes. The 
segregation of the Negroes, the rise of a middle-class, and the conse- 
quent bi-racial adjustment of the races thus have made a place and 
furnished a vocation for the mulattoes. Unable to escape the race and 
unable to constitute a caste above the race, they remained with the race 
and became its real leaders. They are the professional and business men 
of the race. They are the leaders in all the racial and inter-racial af- 
fairs. The bi-racial arrangement gives the mulatto the opportunity for 
a useful life and, at the same time, it allows him to remain superior to 
his black fellows. 

“These Southern mulatto leaders, however, are men who, at least 
outwardly, consider themselves Negroes. They are men who have 
given up, in practice if not in theory, the hopeless struggle for social 
recognition by the whites and identified themselves with the black 
group. Their status is fixed; they are members of the Negro race. 
Social equality with the whites is out of the question and the denial of 
it ceases to disturb them. The success they make in life is in another 
direction and the amount of it depends upon themselves. They are 
men who have concealed, if they have not succeeded in overcoming, 
their aversion for the black man. They do not openly flaunt their su- 
periority because of their white blood, and they find their life and their 
work among their darker and more backward fellows. The mu- 
lattoes, for the most part Southern mulattoes, have, in this new adjust- 
ment of the races, found their place as the real and natural leaders of 
the race. They are the men who teach the black man in the schools and 
in the Negro colleges, who preach to him from the pulpits, who man- 
age his banks and business enterprises, who rise to prominence in all 
the social, political, and economic affairs of the race. . . .4 

“The mulatto feels himself in alliance with the group and in the 
cooperation of common activities there arises a sympathetic understand- 
ing and appreciation which fuses the mulatto, in sentiments and atti- 
tudes, with the larger whole. He is identified with the black group, 
feels the mute longing of the common folk, feels himself a part of it, is 

“Reuter, op. cit., pp. 359-62. 


572 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


moulded by it, and comes, little by little, to realize himself as a factor 
in the common life and purpose of the group. He ceases to be, 
in thought and feeling, a stranger among his people; he learns to appre- 
ciate them, ceases to be ashamed of his relationship to them, ceases to 
resent being classed with them. Their problems become his problems ; 
their life, his life. The mulatto thus ceases to be a problem within a 
problem; he becomes a functioning unit in the social life of an evolving 
people.” ® 

Turning to the aspects of the question in the North, Professor 
Reuter says that: “where the Negroes are relatively less numerous, they 
have in general not been legally assigned a definite racial status in the 
community life. ... ] 

“There is among the Negroes in the North an absence of unity and 
race solidarity. The numbers of the race are relatively small, widely 
scattered, unorganized, and without a common interest. It is predom- 
inantly an urban population and stands for the most part as a popula- 
tion of unskilled laborers dependent for the means of livelihood upon 
white employers. Their tendency to congregate in one or a few sec- 
tions of the cities and towns gives an appearance of unity which in 
reality does not exist; the residential segregation is a matter of eco- 
nomic necessity rather than a matter of choice. The race is divided 
into innumerable antagonistic groups, societies, orders, factions, cliques, 
and what not, endless in number and puzzling in complexity, whose 
mutual jealousy and distrust prevent any united, coOperative action. 
There is no leadership that has any considerable following and no pro- 
gram for racial progress that has the assent of more than a faction 
of the Negro group; there is nothing to hold the various factions to- 
gether and the group is without any semblance of organized unity. 

“The superior men of the race, even more than in the South, are 
mulattoes. . . .® 

“The Northern mulattoes are, however, in spite of their superior 
education and position, without a definite rdle in the inter-racial life 
of the community. More than in the Southern section of the country, 
the mulattoes are separated in fact and in sympathy from the mass of 
the race. They are proud of their European blood, their smoother fea- 
tures, their ‘better’ hair and their higher economic status; they are not 
always careful to conceal the fact. Frequently they live apart from the 
Negro community, find their social life among others of their kind, at- 

* Reuter, op. cit., p. 362. 

*Ibid., p. 366. 


RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 573 


tend white churches or form congregations of their own class and color. 
The upper class mulattoes are frequently without much acquaintance 
with the real Negroes. In their professional or business life, they 
are separated from the mass of the race and come often into very 
little contact with them even in a business way. Their idea of the Negro 
and their attitude toward him, is the idea and the attitude of the white 
man. The attitude is one of more or less kindly toleration and mild 
contempt which changes to active discrimination and positive hatred 
when the Negro assumes the attitude of an equal and seeks the priv- 
ilege of social equality. In their public utterances the Negro may be 
idealized, but there is no desire or disposition on the part of the mulatto 
to have any intimate association with him. 

“Yet the mulattoes assume the role of spokesman for the race; they 
undertake to represent the Negro and to speak for him. Their superior 
education, their higher economic status as well as their greater individ- 
ual success, and their more prominent position give plausibility to their 
assumption of leadership and allow them, rather than men who are 
closer to the race and better able to voice the feelings and attitudes of 
the inarticulate mass, to get themselves accepted as representatives of 
the Negroes. They appear as champions of the Negro at all times 
when there is profit or notoriety to be gained by so doing. They make 
incendiary speeches, draw up petitions and protests, appear before leg- 
islative and executive committees as the representatives of a people they 
only imperfectly represent... .”7 

“The agitations of the mulatto groups and individuals are, for ob- 
vious reasons, carried on in the name of the Negro, not in the name of 
the mulatto. The ends to be reached are such as concern the real 
Negroes very little. The agitations voice the bitterness of the supe- 
rior mulattoes, of the deracialized men of education, culture, and re- 
finement who resent and rebel against the intolerant social edict that 
excludes them from white society and classes them with the despised 
race? 

“The inter-racial situation in the North is thus, in very large part, 
a caste arrangement. The mulattoes are the superior men and form 
or tend to form, a separate and exclusive class above the race. They 
assume the role of spokesman for the race but they are not an integral 
part of it as are the mulatto leaders of the South. . . ° 

"Reuter, op. cit., pp. 367-8. 

®Ibid., p. 370. 

°Ibid., p. 371. 


574 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





“The mulattoes are rather outside the race, above it. They have not 
given up the hope of equality with the whites; they are not satisfied to 
be Negroes and to find their life and their work among the members of 
the race. They are contemptuous of the blacks who are socially below 
them and envious of the whites who are socially above them. The ac- 
commodation of the races is on horizontal lines with the educated 
and light-colored mulattoes standing between the blacks and the 
whites.’ 7° 

Professor Reuter, however, goes on to say that the caste, or horizon- 
tal, status of race relations in the North is giving way to the bi-racial 
status which obtains in the South through the increasing tendency to 
identify the Northern mulattoes with the Northern blacks and the re- 
sulting increase of racial solidarity. ‘But curiously enough,” he says, 
“the rebellious attitude of the militant mulattoes against the habitual 
attitude of the white group and their agitations against discriminations, 
whether carried on by themselves or by their white sympathizers, which 
have for their real though seldom openly avowed and sometimes not 
consciously understood purpose the allowing of the superior, educated 
mulattoes to escape from the Negro race and to be absorbed into the 
white race—their protests and complaints and campaigns of bitterness 
and abuse—have an effect quite different from that desired. It tends 
to defeat its own object and works ultimately to the profit of the Negro 
group as a whole rather than to that of the protesting group. Instead 
of influencing the white man to recognize the mulattoes as a superior 
type of man and to accept them on a rating different from that on which 
he accepts the mass of the race—as an individual regardless of race or 
color—the effect is to identify the complaining individuals more closely 
with the masses of the race; it tends to solidify the race and, in the 
thinking of the white man, to class the agitators with it. Its effect is 
not to break down the white man’s antipathy and prejudice, but to make 
the feeling more acute and to make more conscious and distinct the de- 
termination of the white people to preserve their ideals of racial and 
social purity. It results in a stricter and a more conscious and pur- 
poseful drawing of the color line and a drawing of the line where it 
had previously not been drawn. In the effort to escape the race, the 
mulattoes become more than ever identified with it. The segregation 
policy which exists in all lines everywhere in the South and less openly 
and frankly but frequently not less effectively in the North wherever 
the Negroes are numerous and troublesome, is in large part a reaction 

*® Reuter, op. cit., p. 371. 


RACIAL SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 575 





on the part of the white people against the militant mulattoes’ efforts 
to achieve social equality with the whites. 

“Both the mulattoes and the Negroes stand to profit in the end by 
the agitation of the radical mulatto group for social and class recog- 
nition. The struggle for abstract rights is not productive of any im- 
portant results in the way of removing racial prejudice or social dis- 
crimination; it has rather the contrary tendency. But it serves to 
identify the mulatto with the race and this is an advantage both to the 
black and to the yellow man. The black Negroes are the gainers by 
having their natural leaders thrust, even though it be against their will, 
back upon the race. The mulattoes are gainers in that they are thus 
forced to see and to embrace the great opportunity which the presence 
of the people of their own race affords them for a useful and a valu- 
able life of real leadership. The horizontal accommodation—the caste 
system—of the North seems destined ultimately to transform itself, 
as the earlier caste system of the South has already largely done, into 
a vertical accommodation—a bi-racial system.” 1? 

Assuming that there is a considerable group of Negroes in the 
United States who still ardently crave the society of white people and 
look forward to a day of general amalgamation, there are reasons for 
believing that their interest in racial intermixture is a temporary and 
artificially cultivated state of mind which is contrary to their natural 
impulse, and which will either pass away, or linger as an aberration 
among a class of men whose influence will be negligible. 

I have iterated that the tendency of unlike races, when juxtaposed 
in mass, is to segregate and to prefer social contact and intermarriage 
within their own race circles. In the United States, if some Negroes 
crave the society of white people, it is in a large measure because the 
white people represent a higher culture, the possession of which, with 
all of its privileges and opportunities, seems impossible outside of that 
society. Hence it is the aspiration of the Negro for cultural fellow- 
ship and opportunity rather than for companionship with white people 
which inclines him to long for and to imagine that he would enjoy the 
white man’s. society. The more we enlarge the opportunities of the 
Negro, and the more he develops a cultural tradition of his own, the 
more he will be drawn toward his own people and the less he will feel 
a desire to mingle socially with the whites.” 


“Reuter, op. cit., pp. 372-4. 
” Dr. Frissell, president of Hampton Institute, says: “I wish our friends in 
the South could learn the lesson we have learned here, which is that when the 


576 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


It may be several generations before the highly educated class of 
Negroes can find a satisfying intercourse in the society of their own 
people, and, in the meantime, those of them who seem to covet the so- 
ciety of white people should be less viewed as longing for the day of 
universal miscegenation than as longing for a day of universal culture 
when the intercourse between races shall be characterized by justice 
and courtesy. 

From the standpoint of each race, therefore, I think there are pos- 
sibilities of a more sympathetic understanding of each other’s point of 
view, of an agreement on things fundamental, and of a hopeful going 
ahead toward more open opportunities. 


Negro is really cultivated and taught self-respect he prefers to keep to himself, 
to associate with other cultivated negroes, and does not bother the white people 
at all.” Quoted by Patterson, The Negro and His Needs, p. 191. 


CHAPTER 70 
SUGGESTED SPHERE OF NEGRO ACTIVITY 


Propitiousness for the Survival of the Negro of Conditions Which Minimize 
Competition with the Whites—Advantages of the Natural Tendency of the 
Negro to Keep Apart—Need of Training More Negroes for Skilled Labor 
and for Professional Careers—Need of Education Better Adapted to the 
Negro’s Cultural Status and Spheres of Activity 


I THINK it stands to reason that the survival of the Negro would be 
favored by the maintenance of conditions which minimize competi- 
tion with the white race. Without assigning to the Negro the exclusive 
status of a serving class, or furthering the process of segregation by 
law, it should be possible to keep open to him sundry spheres of activity 
upon which the white man would not aggressively encroach. For in- 
stance, Negroes are not likely to be hampered in the purchase and op- 
eration of farms, and, beside the large sphere which they occupy as 
tenants, crop-hands and domestic servants, they should be able to hold 
and enlarge the field, in which they have gained entrance as both 
skilled and unskilled workers, in the world of mining and manufactur- 
ing. Any kind of work which by custom has come to belong to a group 
of Negroes will be easy to retain as compared to kinds of work in 
which the Negro has only an individual and precarious foothold. 

The natural tendency of the Negro to segregate insures for him a 
diversity of occupations almost equal to that of the whites. It offers 
opportunities for nearly every kind of trade and handicraft; it opens a 
career for the teacher, the doctor, the dentist, the lawyer, and the 
preacher. There will always be room at the top for men and women of 
talent. 

Among the lines of activity offering the prospect of immediate ad- 
vancement to the Negroes, I would suggest the training of larger num- 
bers of them for the skilled trades. A great drawback to the Negroes 
at present is that they furnish an oversupply of raw labor which is 
everywhere the most irregular in demand or the poorest paid. The 
best service which could be rendered the Negro would be to provide 
for him more and better-equipped industrial schools with the view to 
relieving the pressure in the unskilled trades, and enabling him to earn 

577 


578 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


better wages, and secure more regular employment. ‘There is a large 
field for the Negro in the skilled trades in serving his own race. And 
in a great many kinds of skilled trades, now occupied by the whites, 
the Negro could find entrance, if he had an efficiency equal to that of 
the whites. The vast resources yet undeveloped in this country will 
insure a great demand for labor for many years to come, and the Negro 
should qualify himself to share in supplying that demand. The exclu- 
sion of the Negro from the unions of skilled laborers has been more on 
account of his inefficiency and objectionable traits than on account of 
his color. If the Negro were less zealous in raising the race issue on 
all occasions, and less disposed to follow the lead of men who make a 
profession of stirring up race prejudice, the opposition to him in indus- 
trial circles would be less stubborn. In many manufacturing and me- 
chanical industries there are now large numbers of skilled Negro em- 
ployes, and in some cases they are admitted to the unions of the 
whites, and in other cases they belong to unions of their own. The 
field of the Negro in the skilled trades is by no means occupied, and 
there are possibilities of greatly enlarging it. 

In the line of the professional careers there are extensive oppor- 
tunities still available for the Negro, both within his own race and in 
open competition with the whites. In the profession of teacher in the 
common schools and in colleges, in the ministry, in medicine, dentistry, 
law, literature, and art, there is a growing demand, made necessary by 
the increasing Negro population. In most of the professions the ser- 
vices of the Negro are limited almost entirely to his own race, but in 
some of the professions of the highest rank, such as authorship, music, 
painting, and sculpture, the Negro can count on a liberal support 
from the white public. In the fine arts the Negro has a special advan- 
tage in the prominence which he gains through the rarity of men 
of his color found in them. The generous support which the white 
public has given to Negro artists like Henry O. Tanner, the painter, 
and Meta Warrick Fuller, the sculptor, and Negro authors like Booker 
Washington, DuBois, Dunbar, etcetera, shows that there are great 
possibilities for the Negro in these lines of culture. And these pos- 
sibilities could be greatly enlarged by building up a more friendly re- 
lationship between the races. It is unreasonable to expect the Negroes 
in the lower walks of life to manifest an ambition to rise if there are 
not opportunities at the top, where the more gifted of the race may win 
distinction and serve as inspiring models. 

For all the people of the United States there is need of an educa- 


SUGGESTED SPHERE OF NEGRO ACTIVITY 579 
LE ELLE EEE TET NRE edi 
tional policy which embraces the phases of life which lie outside the 
realm of books, especially those phases which lie within the realm of 
social life. And the need of such an educational policy is especially urgent 
for our Negro population. The Negro authors and editors in the United 
States are generally obsessed with the idea that learning to read and 
write is education, and they point to the falling off in Negro illiteracy 
as evidence of the marvelous progress of their race. Contrary to this, 
Frederick Hoffman has presented evidence to show that education has 
thus far had no appreciable effect on the moral progress of the Negro in 
the United States.t He takes Leroy-Beaulieu’s definition of education 
as a process of developing desirable traits and of eliminating undesirable 
traits ; and he finds that the undesirable traits of the Negro tend to persist 
in spite of everything that schools have been able to accomplish. What- 
ever may be thought of the soundness of Hoffman’s view, I think the fact 
is evident from what I have said in Chapter 52 of this volume that the 
traits of the Negro are different from those of the Caucasian, and that 
some of the Negro traits militate greatly against his moral stamina, and 
his likelihood of survival. Therefore, it seems to me that there are vast 
opportunities for Negro leaders to distinguish themselves by devising 
new educational policies, new kinds of schools, and new kinds of mental 
and moral stimuli, with a view to strengthening the desirable traits of 
their people and eliminating the undesirable ones. The work of Booker 
Washington represents an unique innovation in Negro education, the 
consequence of which has been a notable uplifting of a large mass of 
his people; and there are unexplored fields for many more Booker 
Washingtons, if the future can raise up men of his power of visu- 
alizing the needs of the race. 

Up to the present time, Negro education has shared, with that of 
the white man, the fault of being top-heavy, 1. e., colleges and univer- 
sities have developed out of proportion to, and at the expense of the 
common and high schools. There are so many Negro colleges and uni- 
versities that it is impossible to maintain them except on a very low 
standard of efficiency. There is, therefore, need of eliminating the 
mass of these so-called institutions of learning, and concentrating the 
available resources on a few institutions of high standard, located geo- 
graphically in reference to demand. The present status of Negro sec- 
ondary education represents an immense waste of money, and indicates 
a lack of grasp of the educational needs of the race. 

Negro education has also shared with that of the white man the 


*Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 236. 


580 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


fault of being too scholastic, 1. e., having too little relation to practi- 
cal life, and being particularly deficient in the social sciences. 

As for elementary education, the Negroes of the South, as also 
the white people, need more and better common schools. In propor- 
tion as the wealth of the South increases, and the public-school system 
becomes more efficient, the white people should see to it that the schools 
for the Negro receive an adequate share of the increasing school fund. 
All primary schools for Negroes, it seems to me, should be equipped for 
instruction in the industrial arts, especially domestic economy, and, in 
the rural districts, agriculture. And, with our development of a rich 
and philanthropic class, we should make liberal gifts to such special 
schools as Hampton and Tuskegee, and not leave them entirely to Nor- 
thern generosity for their expansion. 

In other chapters I have discussed the subject of Negro education 
in detail, and I merely mention it here in order to point out the great 
possibilities of raising the economic and moral status of the Negro 
through the medium of better ¢ducational policies and better codrdi- 
nated schools. 


CHAPTER 71 
GOOD HOMES, LESS POLITICS, MORE VISION 


Paths of Hope in the Direction of Better Dwelling-houses and Better Protection 
of the Negro’s Home—The Suppression of Mobs—Less Concentration upon 
Politics—Better Understanding between the North and South on the Political 
Question—Removal of Incentives for the White Demagogue—Golden Oppor- 
tunities Now Beckoning to the Negro of Thrift 


fe from better education, however, there are many things which 
might be done for the advancement of the welfare of our Negro 
population, and among these I would mention better housing and sani- 
tary conditions in Negro residential districts. In the towns and cities of 
the United States the Negroes generally occupy segregated quarters, 
commonly designated as New Africa, Haiti, Snow Hill, Smoky Hol- 
low, Log Town, Buzzard’s Roost, etcetera, where the houses are 
generally in a state of dilapidation, and without modern conveniences, 
and where the streets and premises generally are without sanitary reg- 
ulations or oversight. Now, it is perfectly evident that no amount or 
kind of education is going to do much to elevate the Negro as long 
as his domestic surroundings are so demoralizing. If the slums of our 
white people in our large cities are the breeding grounds of vice, dis- 
ease, and crime, so also are the slums of our colored population. A 
boy or girl raised in slum surroundings has not a half a chance of mak- 
ing good. As a first essential to any moral progress of either white or 
black people, we need to establish standardized housing conditions. 
The renting of houses unfit for human habitation is one of the worst 
crimes which can be committed, and we need public sentiment and 
laws to prevent such houses from being occupied. Every municipality 
which has a Negro quarter should provide it with proper sewage drains, 
light, street-cleaning, and garbage-collection ; and, above all, with proper 
police protection, to the extent at least of suppressing disorderly houses. 

In addition to what municipalities might do for the Negro quarters, 
something ought to be done by public-spirited white men in the direc- 
tion of building model houses for Negroes to buy or rent; and much 


also ought to be done by the Negroes themselves in the direction of 
581 


582 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





organizing land companies, and building and loan associations, to pro- 
vide better locations and better homes for their people. 

One of the most momentous needs of the Negro is a higher stand- 
ard of sex morality. Sexual incontinence seems to be a great weak- 
ness of the Negro race, which is partly due to hereditary traits devel- 
oped in Africa, and partly due to its position of servility among the 
white races. Under the matrilineal family, which has existed from 
time immemorial in Africa, sexual incontinence is not attended with 
the evil consequences that necessarily follow from it among the Cau- 
casian races, the traditions of which are those of the patrilineal family. 
Consequently there have never developed among the Negro races the 
ideas of chastity which are so consecrated among the Caucasians. The 
animistic and polytheistic religion of the African Negroes rather pro- 
motes sexual incontinence, and exalts it to a virtue, while the religion 
of the Caucasians regards sexual incontinence as a cardinal sin. 

Among the Negroes of the United States nothing so much harms 
their vitality and stands in the way of their economic and moral effi- 
ciency as their addiction to sexual vice. On account of the constitu- 
tional weakness of the Negroes in this matter, their unfortunate tra- 
ditions, and their present defenseless position, the task of elevating the 
domestic morals of the race will be very difficult and will require a long 
period of time for the accomplishment of results. But the need of prog- 
ress in this respect is so pressing that it should call forth from the best 
men and women of both races an immediate concentration of endeavor 
to set influences at work which will in some measure answer to the need. 

One of the things which the white people should do, in the matter 
of better home life for the Negro, is to develop a stronger sentiment 
against sexual intercourse between white men and Negro women; not 
alone because of the mongrel progeny which follows, but because such 
intercourse is especially degrading to both races. Prostitution all over 
the world is, and has ever been, a matter of the strong taking advan- 
tage of the weak. Because the white man, thanks to his inherited cul- 
ture, occupies a position of eminence, it is especially ignoble in him to 
find his victims among the weak and unprotected women of the Negro 
race. It is hardly less ignoble to take advantage of the weakness of 
Negro girls than to take advantage of a feeble-minded, a deaf, a blind, 
or an orphaned white girl. If Southern chivalry exalts and defends 
the honor of Southern white women, should it not manifest some dis- 
position to build up and protect the virtue of colored women? What 
the spirit of Southern chivalry needs to do is to visit such condemna- 


GOOD HOMES, LESS POLITICS, MORE VISION — 583 


tion upon the white consorts of Negro women that cohabitation be- 
tween the races will be completely suppressed. The white race, as the 
stronger, instead of exploiting a weaker race, is under obligation to 
defend and protect it. While cohabitation between the races is undoubt- 
edly on the decline, public sentiment in the South is still too lenient 
with the Southern white bully who utters diatribes against social equal- 
ity and lynches Negroes for assaults upon white women, and, at the 
same time, cohabits with the black wench, bringing into the world a 
mongrel progeny representing the lowest inheritance of both races. 

Maurice Evans thinks that if the South is to escape the censure of 
the civilized world, it must see to it “‘that the standard of honor be so 
raised that the chastity of the Negro woman is safeguarded as that 
of her white sister.”* 

In this connection it seems fitting to say that the white people should 
take more effective measures to protect the Negro against white mobs. 
Any people claiming to be civilized and free should be able to provide 
an adequate legal redress for every wrong, and whenever a free people 
override their own laws they thereby confess their incapacity for self- 
government. The white man who joins a mob puts himself on a level 
with the Negro criminal in that both have given way to brute passion. 
Mob action, by either white or colored men, instead of helping, only 
postpones, the settlement of the race problem. Within the past few 
decades the South has awakened to the discredit and injury to its civ- 
ilization of lynchings and others forms of mob-violence; and public 
opinion, as reflected by the press, the pulpit, and the platform, is prac- 
tically a unit against such forms of lawlessness. There is, however, 
still an amount of lawlessness prevalent which indicates that public 
sentiment alone is powerless to control it. 

A Southern woman says in reference to lynching: “There are a 
hundred law-abiding Southerners—oh, far, far more—to every one of 
these lawless firebrands; yet, individualistic as we are, unorganized by 
a social consciousness, half a dozen of them can sway the weak, the 
excitable, the uninformed among us, and fire the mob spirit, and lay 
the honor of thousands in the dust.” ? 

A lesson which our modern democracies have not yet sufficiently 
learned is that an aroused public opinion is inadequate to check a wrong 
or inaugurate a reform. In order to make itself prevail, it is necessary 
that public opinion be organized. This fact has been brought home to 


1Black and White in the Southern States, p. 191. 
2“Black and White in the South,” Outlook, Mar. 7, 1924. 


584 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


us time and again in our warfare against political corruption in our 
cities. 

The South needs to organize civic leagues in every town and county 
which should be the exponents and administrators of public sentiment. 
These should enlist the service of the best men and women of both 
races, and, in addition to carrying out a continuous program of civic 
betterment, should be prepared to act promptly and vigorously against 
any threatened violence. The inter-racial committees, now widely or- 
ganized in the counties in the South, are having a wholesome effect in 
building up sentiment against violence. They are not, however, in- 
tended to take the place of local civic leagues, but merely to cooperate 
with them. The organization of civic leagues should greatly facilitate 
the work of the inter-racial committees. The chief reason of the per- 
sistence of mob violence in the South is that the people do not realize 
the necessity of organization until some unforeseen and unexpected riot 
breaks out, as in Atlanta in 1915. The civic leagues and the inter-racial 
committees should cooperate with the authorities of the city, the county, 
and the state governments in the matter of proper schools, libraries, 
parks, police protection, sanitation, transportation facilities, etcetera, 
for the colored people. The motto of the white race should be: A 
higher civilization by uplifting the Negro, not by exploiting him. 

In reference to the exercise of political privileges, there is need of a 
better understanding between the white people of the South and those 
of the North, and between the Negro and the whites of both sections. 

The people of the South are thoroughly reconciled to the fact that 
the provisions of our Constitution, prohibiting any discrimination in 
civil rights on account of race or color, are there to stay. During the 
Reconstruction times, when these provisions were added to our Constitu- 
tion and put in force, the Southern people bitterly opposed them be- 
cause they could not foresee how such provisions could be carried out 
without rendering permanent the deplorable state of things which the 
Reconstruction era had brought about. The Southern people now know 
that the new provisions of the Constitution do not prohibit a state from 
excluding from the franchise those citizens who cannot make an intelli- 
gent use of it; and, because the repeal of the new provisions of our 
Constitution is impossible and unnecessary, the Southern people are 
firmly resolved to live under and obey the Constitution as it stands. 

However, the South is in favor of protecting itself against a pos- 
sible relapse into the Reconstruction horrors by enacting franchise laws 
which, while conforming to our Constitution, will exclude from the 


GOOD HOMIES, LESS POLITICS, MORE VISION 585 





baliot the element of the population which is a menace to good govern- 
ment. These franchise laws are much criticized on the ground that 
they are not applied alike to the whites and blacks. For instance, it is 
claimed that illiterate Negroes are strictly excluded from voting while 
illiterate white men vote without molestation. Now, the facts of the 
matter are about as follows: First, in most of the Southern states Ne- 
groes who are legally qualified to vote are allowed to do so without 
hindrance. For instance, in Virginia and North Carolina qualified Ne- 
groes are as unhampered in voting as qualified white people. Second, 
in some states where the Negro population is very great, the suffrage 
tests are applied more stringently to Negroes than to whites. The rea- 
son for this stricter scrutiny of the Negroes is because experience has 
shown that their votes have been a menace to good government, and the 
object of the new franchise laws is to remove this menace. Now, ad- 
mitting that the laws are more strictly applied to the Negroes, it does 
not follow that the discriminations against them are solely on account 
of their race or color; for, even in South Carolina, one may see at many 
polling places Negroes, known to be good citizens, depositing their bal- 
lots without any objection whatever from the white people. The fun- 
damental reason, therefore, for excluding the mass of Negroes from 
the ballot is their unfitness, and not merely their color. 

In South Carolina the mass of Negroes remain away from the polls, 
because so few of them are legally qualified that their vote has no effect 
on the result. Their vote is therefore not solicited by political leaders 
and they lapse into an indifference to political campaigns. With the 
present status of the Negro race in South Carolina I do not believe that 
a larger participation of the Negro in politics would be good for either 
race. So long as South Carolina regulates her franchise according to 
law, the people from outside, black or white, should not be over-ready 
to offer criticisms. 

To be perfectly frank, however, whatever might be the fitness of 
the Negroes under any test, the white people would not permit them to 
vote, if, as in South Carolina or Mississippi, their voting would mean 
a return to Negro domination. The history of Reconstruction has fully 
demonstrated that the white people will resort to any means possible, 
and even suffer extermination, rather than submit to Negro rule. If 
the Negroes exercised their franchise privilege as do the Germans, Bo- 
hemians. Poles, Tews, and other races in our country, by voting accord- 
ing to their convictions, and distributing their votes among the existing 
political parties, their exercise of the franchise could never become a 


586 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





menace; but so long as they vote on a racial basis their exercise of the 
franchise will be a menace wherever they are numerous. I do not be- 
lieve that the white people of any state in our Union would submit to 
Negro supremacy, and I do not believe that public sentiment anywhere 
would sanction such supremacy. For the same reasons the people of 
our country would not countenance Japanese supremacy in California. 
Any element of population in any state which becomes a menace to good 
government cannot be said to be qualified for exercising the franchise, 
and any state having such an element in its population can always find 
rational and constitutional grounds for protecting itself. 

It seems to me to be a settled fact, demonstrated over and over 
again, that neither the Negro, nor any other colored race will ever be 
allowed to exercise civil rights in the United States to the extent of 
controlling any part of our government. And, therefore, I think it 
the part of wisdom for Negro leaders to recognize this fact, and not to 
make too much ado over the franchise in states where the Negroes con- 
stitute a menacing proportion of the population. They should, at least, 
limit their complaints to cases of unquestionably qualified Negroes who 
have been denied the ballot, and they should cease to hold up to the 
mass of their race the false idea that the franchise is a right, instead 
of a privilege depending upon fitness for good citizenship. In states 
where the Negro population is not a menace, I think that the white 
people are willing to cooperate with the Negro leaders in seeing to it 
that all qualified Negroes are allowed to vote. In the matter of the 
Negro franchise in the South there is opportunity for Negro leaders 
to exercise a wisdom and discretion which will reflect credit on them- 
selves, and, at the same time, pave the way for a larger number of Ne- 
groes to qualify for the suffrage and to profit by its privileges. They 
should appreciate the fact that the harmonious living together, in the 
same territory, of two races as unlike as the Negro and the Caucasian 
is one of the most difficult of problems, and that any straining of the 
Negro in the direction of political activities is apt to make the problem 
more difficult. 

Says the late Professor Shaler: “There is no other way open to us 
except to trust the future of the Negro to the white people with whom 
he is in contact. All the expedients of the reconstruction period re- 
sulted in hindering the advance of the work it was intended to accom- 
plish, for the reason that it set the races over against each other; it 
broke up the old friendly relation which had effaced the most serious 
of the tribal prejudices, and set those persons in flame. Any further 


GOOD HOMES, LESS POLITICS, MORE VISION _ 587 


effort to force an adjustment will be likely to result in something like 
race war. That we had best trust, and may fairly trust, to the South 
to contrive safety and justice out of the situation has happily become 
evident to the whole people. By putting the burden on those who are 
best fitted to bear it we shall sooner and more surely bring them to deal 
with it in the manner in which men of our race are accustomed to deal 
with grave social problems—painstakingly and with justice.” * 

The worst of the political aspects of the Negro problem is the mis- 
chief done by white demagogues. The fact that the Negro vote often 
has a deciding influence in the nomination and election of candidates 
for office opens the way for the white demagogue to get in power by 
coddling the Negro and pandering to his prejudices. In the North, the 
white demagogue, in attempting to ride into office on the Negro’s back, 
is prone to outdo the most radical Negro, in charging the Southern 
whites with every kind of injustice to the Negro population, and he 
chimes in with the radical Negro leaders in proclaiming the franchise 
laws in the South unconstitutional and outrages upon the natural rights 
of the citizens. At the same time, the white demagogue in the South 
is apt to curry favor with the lower type of his own race by a constant 
harping upon the Negro issue, or making a business of corralling the 
Negro vote in the hope of gaining some elective or appointive office 
for himself. The Northern white demagogue has a motive for stirring 
up in the Negro a bitterness against the Southern whites, and the 
Southern white demagogue has a motive for stirring up in the whites 
a bitterness against the Negro. Thus the presence of the Negro in our 
midst gives a special field for the flourishing of a type of white politi- 
cian who otherwise would remain in obscurity. Since the Civil War 
the Negro voters have been only dice and trump-cards for white dema- 
gogues. They have introduced into our political life a new game of 
chance, played for a few white men’s benefit, and to the detriment of 
the Negro. 

“It is well to understand,” says Shaler, “that the experiment of 
combining in a democratic society, in somewhere near equal numbers, 
two such widely separated races as the Aryans and Negroes, has never 
been essayed. Even under arbitrary governments the association of 
less discrepant folk has proved impracticable.’’ 

In harmony with the view. of Shaler, Professor Walter I’. Willcox 
remarks that, “The greatest problem which modern democracy has to 


®The Neighbor, p. 336. 
* Tbid., p. 180. 


588 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 


face is perhaps this: Can the democratic forms developed among a 
homogeneous people with unifying traditions like the people of England, 
Old and New, be extended to people widely different in race, religion, 
and ethical and social code?” ® 

In the face of the greatest problem that confronts a democracy, and 
one which has nowhere been solved, it would seem to be the part of 
wisdom of Negro leaders to stress some other point of race relationship 
than that of political equality, which in other races has come about by 
a slow evolution, following the attainment of equality in other respects. 

The saddest fact, in all of the tragic conflicts between the Negro 
and the whites, is that in nearly every case the inciters of trouble have 
been either white demagogues or white fanatics. There would never 
have been a race war in Saint Domingue, with its massacre of the 
white population, but for the work of white fanatics sent out from 
France, who inflamed the passions of the blacks, and urged them to 
take up arms against the white population. 

Perhaps one reason for the great influence of the white demagogues 
over the Negro is that the better class of whites stand too much aloof 
from him. It is not to be wondered at that the Negro follows the 
only white people who take an interest in him. The demoralizing in- 
fluence of the bad white men over the Negro should be overcome by 
a closer cooperation between the better element of both races, such 
as the inter-racial commissions in the South are attempting to bring 
about. The best white people must become the best friends of the 
Negro before the worst Negroes can be saved from corruption by the 
worst white people. 

Instead of rushing the Negroes in the direction of the political 
rapids, it should be the part of wise leadership to point the way to the 
open doors which offer easier and more inviting ascent into the higher 
levels of culture. In the fields of agriculture, trade and crafts, educa- 
tion, and professional life, there are possibilities of an ever-increasing 
freedom to aspire and achieve. 

Whatever diverts the attention of the Negro away from these op- 
portunities which now lie invitingly before him must do him harm 
and perhaps irreparable harm. That these opportunities are golden 
is attested by the unbiased opinion of men from outside the South. 

“The friends of the race,” says Maurice Evans, “and the friends of 
the whole South, should impress on the Negro that now he has a chance, 
but that the chance is one which, if not taken now, will pass never 


* Quoted in Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 475. 


GOOD HOMES, LESS POLITICS, MORE VISION 589 





to be repeated. Individuals and races have their opportunity which if 
neglected never comes again. If the Negro race cannot see and seize 
this one, the increasing competition of urban life, the ever-augmenting 
complexity of our civilization, will find him unprepared, and the out- 
look for him is dark indeed. He will remain a helot, not bound by 
the material shackles that bound his limbs in slavery times, but as much 
a slave as though those fetters remained.” ° 

“Dr. Booker Washington is right, emphasize the opportunities, and 
what opportunities! Would to God the rural labourer of my own race 
in my native land had such a chance. Imagine it a land of sunshine, 
not too hot nor too cold, abundant rainfall distributed through the year, 
timber for all purposes, firewood at the door, and streams of clear water 
running through the land. I shall show elsewhere how the Negro may 
get a home of his own in this land, meantime I ask my readers to take 
my word for it that any able-bodied, intelligent, industrious, thrifty 
Negro may have a home of his own in these surroundings, and what a 
home he could make! Seeing the opportunity standing out so clearly— 
even I, just a visitor, felt my fingers itch to grasp axe and spade and 
make a beginning... .’” 

“Has the race the insight to see the great opportunity and the con- 
centrated force of purpose to seize it? For there is a great opportunity 
open to the mass of the Negro people, such as is offered to few of the 
backward races of the world.” § 

Another Englishman, Sir Harry H. Johnston, says that “nowhere 
in the world—certainly not in Africa—has the Negro been given such 
a chance of mental and physical development as in the United States.” ® 

* Black and White in the Southern States, p. 259. 

’ Ibid.) piv 1to. 

5 Tbid., p. 248. 
*The Negro in the New World, p. 478. 


CHAPTER 72 
FAITH IN ACHIEVEMENT 


Paths of Hope in the Direction of Revivification of the Negro’s Religion—The 
Development of His Natural A‘sthetic Aptitudes—The Complexity and Mul- 
tiplicity of the Difficulties of the Negro Problem—Likelihood of Compen- 
sating Advantages to Both Races.If Each Faces the Problem with Soldierly 
Courage and Faith in Human Destiny 


HERE are large possibilities in the direction of revivifying the 

Negro’s religious life. The religious impulse is very strong in 
the Negro race, and there is no reason why this impulse should not be 
turned in a direction which would lead to a profound transformation 
in the moral vigor of the race. 

There is need of a higher type of man in the Negro ministry, and, 
as a prerequisite to meeting this need, there must be a reconstruction 
of Negro theological schools. At present there are too many Negro 
theological schools, their scholastic standards are too low, and their 
curricula are too unrelated to the ethical aspects of life. In the task 
of consolidating these schools, and of introducing higher standards 
and more social science, there are splendid openings for distinguished 
leadership. 

Also, no less inviting opportunities for leadership lie in the direc- 
tion of developing the Negro’s zsthetic aptitudes. It is well known 
to all students of the Negro race that the esthetic propensities and 
talents of the race are very strong. Gobineau stated it as his opinion 
that the Negro is the most zsthetic of all races. Now, there is no 
telling what wonderful strides the Negro might make in securing a 
better economic footing, and in elevating his moral status through the 
development of zsthetic crafts and products. In woven work, wood 
work, metal work, and pottery, and in all kinds of decorative art, there 
are open doors for the Negro, to say nothing of music, the art in 
which the Negro has shown the most conspicuous talent. From New 
York to Florida, Negro musicians used to be employed exclusively for 
the dances and other social functions of the white people; but their 
places are now taker by white musicians, not because of race prejudice 

590 


FAITH IN ACHIEVEMENT sor 


but because white musicians have learned to play by note and furnish 
better music. The wonderful musical aptitudes of the Negro have 
remained undeveloped and, for the most part, have gone to waste largely 
because the leaders of the race have been too exclusively absorbed in 
theology and politics. 

The foregoing suggestions of opportunities for the betterment of 
the Negro race are not intended as offering a solution to the Negro 
problem, but only as setting forth the present paths of hope. No 
matter what program may be followed by the white people or by the 
Negroes, the Negro problem will not be solved as long as the Negro 
is a part of our population. But the impossibility of a solution is 
no reason for pessimism, or for relaxing our efforts in behalf of 
promoting the welfare of the two races. Much can certainly be done 
in the line of eliminating useless and hurtful conflicts. The very diffi- 
culties, perplexities, and sufferings which the Negro and the white man 
have had to face, and will have to face in the future, as a result of their 
coming in contact, may result in a blessing to both. In the case of 
races, as in the case of individuals, the highest mental and moral 
culture is never attained except under conditions which necessitate 
surmounting catastrophe, misfortune, and broken hopes. It is the 
ability to suffer and triumph over adversities that develops the manly 
man, and also the exalted race. Disasters and handicaps of every kind 
are only demoralizing to an individual or race when they are over- 
whelming or when the individual or race lacks the faith and courage 
to cope with them. 

It is possible for the white man in the South to rise to a higher 
plane of culture than otherwise would be possible to him, if he but 
measure up to his full responsibilities. And, also, it is possible for 
the Negro to rise to a higher plane than otherwise would be possible 
to him, as a consequence of his handicaps in the way of degrading 
servitude, and economic and social proscriptions, if he but measure 
up to his full responsibilities. The Jews, who have suffered more 
than any other race on account of misfortune, persecution, and preju- 
dice, have learned to make a virtue of every adversity, and to-day are 
second to no race in mental and moral achievements. 

The field is broad enough in the United States for both the Negro 
and the Caucasian to make their respective contributions to the world’s 
progress, and for each to help the other where the pathway is steep 
and stony. 

Above all, it is incumbent upon us to have faith that our endeavors 


592 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 

will achieve results outrunning our present knowledge and vision. In 
the great undertakings of a race, nation, or individual, achievement 
always goes beyond the mark aimed at when accompanied by earnest 
striving and faith. Our initiative and our courage are apt to take a 
wrong tack and falter, if not sustained by the feeling that somehow, 
in the eternal and universal unfolding, better things will come to pass 
than we can foresee. 

The main thing to do in reference to the Negro problem is not to 
formulate a program or policy with the conviction that we have at last 
discovered some solution, but to be ever pressing forward, courageously 
striving in the direction of our higher hopes and standards. We 
should ever sail toward the stars’ but at the same time keep a sharp 
eye for the rocks. 

A reason why we cannot formulate a general program or policy 
covering the whole Negro problem is that the problem differs in each 
state, in each county of the several states and in each separate com- 
munity of each county. For instance there are counties in Maryland, 
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama which 
have fewer Negroes than some counties in New Jersey, Connecticut, 
Massachusetts, or Rhode Island. In Lowndes County, Alabama, there 
are over 30,000 Negroes, and in Winston County, Alabama, only seven 
The people in our Northern states who are finding the Negro problem 
difficult should realize how much more difficult it is in the South. All 
we have done toward a solution is to make a first step. What is the 
next? Our business is to watch it. While the problem is a puzzle 
to the intellect, it is a challenge to the heart! It is not given to man 
to look far into the future. The greatest advances of civilization have 
come about without any one’s having had the vision to foresee or 
predict them. They have been made possible only by the strenuous 
endeavor of millions of men pressing toward a goal whose outlines 
were dim and indefinable. 

“The truth is,” says Cooley, “that it is often one of the requisites 
of progress that we trust to the vague, the instinctive, the emotional, 
rather than to what is ascertained and intellectual. The spirit takes on 
form and clarity only under the stress of experience; its newer out- 
reachings are bound to be somewhat obscure and inarticulate. . . . The 
opinion sometimes expressed that social science should set forth a 
definite, tangible criterion of progress is also, I think, based on a false 
conception of the matter, derived, perhaps, from mechanical theories 
of evolution. Until man himself is a mechanism the lines of his higher 


FAITH IN ACHIEVEMENT 593 





destiny can never be precisely foreseen. It is our part to form ideals 
and try to realize them, and these ideals give us a working test of 
progress, but there can be nothing certain or final about them.” } 

The attainment of a solution of the Negro problem is like the attain- 
ment of a state of liberty, in behalf of which we have been throwing 
up our hats, and towards which we have been struggling, for several 
thousand years,—a thing forever indefinable and impossible, as long as 
human lite and its conditions are susceptible of improvement. Life is 
a process of growth, ever requiring infinite renewals and readjustments, 
and we must ever struggle upward toward an ideal which can never be 
realized. 

No two races could possibly offer more striking contrasts than the 
Anglo-American and the Negro. The one has self-refiance, sequestra- 
tion, Puritan rigor, and an inclination to morbid introspection. The 
other has a childish spontaneity and nonchalance, and a disposition 
to lean upon any one of strong will and self-assertion. The Negro loves 
the street life, the crowd, and the spectacular. He is loquacious, fond 
of worldly amusements, and knows how to enjoy himself whole- 
heartedly and without restraint. The Anglo-American crosses bridges 
before he gets to them, and his evil forebodings always cloud his path- 
way to an extent which his actual experiences rarely justify. And, 
when adversity, in fact, overtakes him, he is often sour or downhearted 
for the rest of his life. The Negro always looks forward optimistically 
to a better day, he sees the rainbow in the storm, and when bowed down 
under the most crushing misfortune, he displays a healthy aptitude for 
recovery, and his tears of sorrow are quickly transformed into sparkles 
of mirth. The morbidness of the white man has been undoubtedly 
meliorated by the humor and rollicking disposition of the Negro, and 
the excessive emotionalism of the Negro has been meliorated by the 
introspective and inhibitory traits of the white man. May we not hope 
that the conflict of these two opposite races will work out a com- 
pensating advantage to both, and that the final outcome will justify 
all that the conflict has cost? 


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594 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 





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FAITH IN ACHIEVEMENT 597 


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508 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE 








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INDEX 


Adams, Charles Francis, on the differ- 
ence between the Negro and Cauca- 
sian, 385; on the unwisdom of con- 
ferring equal civil rights upon the 
Negro, 491 

Esthetic Life of the Negro, 307, 325, 
335, 347, 349, 350; suggestions as to 
developing, 590 

7Esthetic Values, 
physiognomy, 362 

Affinities. See Racial Affinities. 

Africa, the Negro in, 3 

Agriculture, the Negro in, 86 

Aldridge, Frederick, actor, 349 

Alexander, Will W., leader in inter- 
racial cooperation, 558 

Allen, James Lane, in reference to the 
Negro, 289 

Altruism, consistent with the social 
separateness of races, 443 

Amalgamation, racial, 362; as a factor 
in evolution, 424; extent of, in the 
United States, 445; sentiment of 
whites and blacks as to, 453; futility 
of advocating, 453 

Angell, James R., on racial differences, 
376 

Antipathies, racial, as related to sex 
intercourse, 419, 420. See Racial 
Affinities and Antipathies. 

Archer, William, on Negro schools, 
68; on Jim Crow laws, 113; on Negro 
preachers, 181; on the inferiority of 
the Negro, 384; on race fusion, 455; 
on the colonization of the Negro, 
484; on the Negro’s losing favor 
among whites, 518; on the desire of 
mulattoes for white society, 570 


applied to race 


Baker, Ray Stannard, on the color line 
in the North, 6, I0, 20, 23; on the 


601 


Negro in politics, 46; on race preju- 
dice, 75; on race contact in the 
North, 39; on Negro traits, 401; on 
race feeling North and South, 441; 
on race segregation in the South, 
113; contrasting DuBois and Booker 
Washington, 520; as author, 270 

Beecher, Henry Ward, views of, on the 
mixture of white and black blood, 
454 

Biological Principles, applied to races, 
410-416, 525 

Birth-rate of the Negro, 527, 530 

Bishoff, on the relation of brain weight 
to intelligence, 389 

Black, idea of, associated with evil, 
363 

Black Belt, in the South, possible 
future domination of, by the Negro, 
481-485; as favorable to Negro in- 
crease, 530; in Chicago, 31 

Blending of Cultures, consequences of, 
424 

Blind Tom, Negro musical genius, 346 

Blumenbach, on race equality, 365 

Boaz, on race equality, 370 

Bonner, Sherwood, authoress depicting 
Negro character, 291 

Brain, size and form of, as indicative 
of intelligence, 389; of Negro and 
white compared, 390 

Braithwaite, William S., literary works 
of, 316 

Brawley, Benjamin, Negro 
quoted, 6; writings of, 326 

Bryant, A. T., mental contrast between 
the Negro and Caucasian, 383 

Bryce, James, on race intermixture in 
the United States, 452; on the inter- 
marriage of whites and Negroes, 
454; on race segregation, 476 


author 


602 


INDEX 





Biicher, on the effect of civilization on 
primitive peoples, 432 

Buchner, Ludwig, on the extinction of 
backward peoples, 542 

Buckle, Thomas, on race equality, 366 

Bullard, General, report of, on Negro 
troops in France, 224, 226, 227, 232 

Burke, Edmund, quoted, 362 

Burmeister, on Negro traits, 397-398, 
401, 408 

Burr, Clinton S., on the colonization 
of the Negro, 462 


Caldwell, Colonel, on the service of © 


Negro troops in France, 235 

California, race problem in, 490, 495, 
569, 586 

Carlyle, on punishment of criminals, 
147; on the inferiority of the Negro, 
382; on the right of a people to 
possess territory, 495 

Carr-Saunders, on the inferiority of 
the Negro, 382; on the relation of 
puberty to mental growth, 393; on 
Negro traits, 407; on the relative 
importance of temperament and in- 
tellect in inheritance, 408; on cross- 
breeding, 411; on the factor of tradi- 
tion in progress, 428; on culture con- 
tact, 436 

Carver, T. N., on the effect of contact 
of high and low standards, 438, 
430. 

Chain-gangs. See Negro Convicts. 

Chamberlain, D. H., on race intermix- 
ture, 454 

Chesnutt, Charles W., novels of, 325; 
views of, on the race issue, 507 

Chicago, the Negro in, 31; as crime 
center, 51 

Children, Negroes likened to, 401 

Civil Equality, as a solution of the 
race problem, 486-492; difficulty of, 
under conditions of racial diversity, 
488; failure of, where whites and 
blacks are massed together, 489 

Civilization, influence of, on primitive 
peoples, 431, 527 


Civil Justice, in the North, 54; in the 
South, 137-142 

Civil Privileges, of the Negro, in the 
Northern states, 39, 46, 494; in the 
Southern states, 103, I10 

Class Distinctions, among Negroes, 96, 
97, 472 

Clay, Henry, on the colonization of the 
Negro, 459 

Clergymen, Southern, on lynching, 559 

Climate, influence of, on culture, 6, 11 

Cohen, O. R., stories of, relating to the 
Negro, 302 


Coleridge, on the marriage of whites 


and blacks, 456 

Colonization, of the Negro, schemes 
for, 458; as a solution of the race 
question, 458-469; aptitude of the 
Negro for, 466 

Colored Free State, as a solution of 
the race problem, 481-485 | 

Color Line, in Harlem, 30; in Northern 
schools, 19, 66-71; in Northern 
churches, 74, 75; in America and Eu- 
rope, 566-568; in New York and 
Georgia contrasted, 568; reasons for 
a, 508 

Commission on Inter-race Cooperation, 
work of, 555 

Competition, of whites and Negroes as 
affecting the survival of the latter, 
541 

Conklin, E. G., on race-crossing, 413; 
on segregation, 471 

Conquest, not the chief means of cul- 
ture diffusion, 428 

Consciousness of Kind, as a factor in 
race-crossing, 364; as a guide to 
social contacts, 364, 417, 418, 419, 420, 
568; as affecting political control, 
489, 490, 494, 497 

Contact of Races. See Race Contacts. 

Contacts, between whites and_ blacks, 
diminishing, 548 

Contrasts, between the Negro and Cau- 
casian, 503 


Cooley, C. H., on faith as a factor in 


progress, 592 





Cooper, James Fenimore, the Negro in 
works of, 263 

Cooperation, need of, between whites 
and blacks, 554; efforts towards in- 


terracial, need of inter- 
racial, 566 

Corrothers, James D., relating his ex- 
pervence as pastor, 75; on Negro 
preachers, 79; on race separation in 
travel, 111; on the Southern white 
man, 135; poems of, 315, 320; auto- 
biography of, 331 

Cotton gin, as affecting slavery in the 
South, 12 

Cox, Ernest, plea of, for racial integ- 
rity, 302; favors Negro colonization, 
467 

Crimes, of the Negro, in the Northern 
states, 49-53; in the Southern states, 
115-120 

Crimes of the whites, against the 
Negro, in Northern states, 54-65; in 
Southern states, 128-131. See Lynch- 
ing, Mobs. 

Cromwell, J. W., as author, 333 

Cross-breeding, consequences of, 410- 
416; function of, 414; as unimportant 
for progress, 427, 428 

Crozier, John B., on culture and race 
mixture, 436 

Cullen, Countee, poetry of, 318 

Culture, conditions favoring the de- 
velopment of, 425; infusion of, the 
means of progress, 428; possible ren- 
ascence of, under different conditions, 
431, 434; conditions which favor the 
ripening of, 436; clash of, within the 
same race and nation, 432-440 

Culture Contacts, influence of, upon 
people of different levels of culture, 
430; influence of, within the same 
race and nation, 432-438; example of 
injurious, 430, 431, 432, 434, 435 

Culture Levels, as determining the 
value of race mixture, 430 


547-565 ; 


Darwin, on race equality, 372; on 
cross-breeding, 410 


Davenport, C. B., on uneugenic mar- 
Tiages, 382 

Death-rate, of the Negro, 527, 528, 
529 

Demagogues, mischief of white, in the 
North and South due to the Negro 
vote, 587, 588; cure for, 588 

Demolins, on race differences, 373 

Dendy, Arthur, on the biological as- 
pects of race-crossing, 415 

De Tocqueville, on religious ‘excesses 
in America, 180; on the impossibility 
of civil equality in the South, 487 

Dillard, James H., promoter of better 
Negro schools, 165, 177, and of inter- 
racial coOperation, 551 

Disfranchisement. See Civil Rights, 
Civil Equality. 

Dixon, Roland B., on racial inequali- 
ties, 375; on head-form and intelli- 
gence, 390 

Dixon, Thomas, novels of, relating to 
the Negro, 285 

Domestic Life of the Negro in the 
North, 24; in the South, 96-102. See 
Family Life. 

Domestic Service. 
ants. 

Donations to Negro Education, by 
white philanthropists, 164-166; by 
Negro philanthropists, 167 

Douglass, Fred, as editor, 351 

Dramatic Art, the Negro in, 349 

Drummond, Henry, on the acuteness of 
sense in man and animals, 399 

DuBois, W. E. B., on race prejudice, 
18; on Negro camp-meetings, 179; as 
author, 330; criticism of, 377; on 
Negro traits, 402; view of, on the 
race question, 506; on the diminish- 
ing contact of Negroes and whites, 
520 

Dunbar, Paul Laurence, poetry of, 307, 
323; novels of, 325; on the face 
problem, 510 

Dunham, R. L., novel of, relating to 
the Negro, 302 

Dunn, L. C., on race-crossing, 414 


See Negro Serv- 


604 


East, Edward M., on race inequalities, 
376; on the mental capacity of the 
Negro, 391; on cross-breeding, 410, 
412 

Economic Status of the Negro, in the 
North, 17; in the South, 85; at close 
of the Civil War, 534, 535; as bear- 
ing upon his survival, 532; means of 
improving the, 577 

Education of the Negro, in the North, 
66; in the South, 149-177; as solu- 
ion of the Negro question, 498-501 ; 
plea for better, 553, 578, 579 


Eliot, Charles W., on opportunities for = 


the Negro, 19; on race segregation, 
71; on the intermarriage of whites 
and blacks, 456 

Environment, influence of, on races, 4, 
I1; on the crime of the Negro, 116; 
on the distribution of culture, 425, 
426 

Equality of Races. See Race Equal- 
ity. 

Evans, Maurice, on the sights of Har- 
lem, 29; on race segregation, III; on 
Negro education, 161, 174; on Negro 
religion, 185; comparing the Zulu 
and American Negro, 383; criticizing 
Finot, 387; on Negro traits, 403; on 
race segregation in Africa, 473, and 
in the United States, 475; on the 
radical school of Negro leaders, 519; 
on the protection of colored women, 
583; on opportunities for the Negro 
in the South, 588 


Faith, need of, 
problem, 590 

Family Life of the Negro, in Africa, 
5; in the North, 37; in the South, 96- 
101 

Family Ties, among Negroes, 99 

Fanatics, as inciters of race troubles, 
588 

Federal Council of Churches of Christ, 
as promoting interracial codperation, 
560 

Fine Arts, 


in facing the race 


Negroes distinguished in 


INDEX 


the, 307-350; opportunity in the, for 
Negroes, 578 
Finot, Jean, on race equality, 366, 387 
Folk Songs. See Negro Songs. 
Franchise Laws, in the South, 
496-584. See Civil Rights. 
French, the, in St. Domingue, 8, 9 
Future of the Negro, views concerning 


the, 525-543 


105, 


Galton, on race differences, 372 

Garvey, Marcus, on the reclamation of 
Africa for the Negro, 465 

Giddings, on consciousness of kind as 
the basis of social relations, 417 

Gobineau, on race inequalities, 373; on 
Negro aptitude for art, 390 

Goldenweiser, on race equality, 370 

Gonzales, Ambrose, on Negro dialect 
stories, 284 

Gordon, A. C, writer of Negro dialect, 
295 

Grant, Madison, on race differences, 
379; views of, referred to, 395 

Greenfield, Elizabeth, concert singer, 
345 

Greenough, Major, on Negro troops, 
ZION 237 

Gregory, J. W., on a possible Free 
Negro State in the South, 481 

Grimké, Archibald H., as author, 327 


Haiti, history of, 7; Negro coloniza- 
tion in, 7; desperate struggle of 
whites in, 8, 495; intervention of 
United States in, 10 

Hammond, Mrs. L. H., book by, on the 
race problem, 303 

Hampton Institute, 171 

Harding, President, on the social sepa- 
rateness of white and colored races, 
512 

Harlem, the Negro capital, 24 

Harris, Joel Chandler, on the Negro, 
283 

Hart, A. B., on the inferiority of the 
Negro, 382; on race segregation, 473 

Hawkins, W. E., poetry of, 314 


INDEX 





Hearn, Lafcadio, on Negro dances, 341, 
347 

Henry, O., novel of, relating to the 
Negro, 301 

High Schools, for Negraes, 158 

Hoffman, F., on Negro sex morals, 
3116; on the intermarriage of whites 
and blacks, 446-447, 450; on bad 
Negro leadership, 521; on the hope- 
lessness of the Negro problem, 525; 
on the mortality of the Negro as 
unfavorable to his survival, 528; on 
the probable extinction of the Negro, 
528, 533; on the economic inefficiency 
of the Negro, 532; as author, 270 

Holmes, Samuel J., on race inequality, 
380; on race-crossing, 415 

Holtzclaw, William, as author, 333 

Housing Problem, of the Negro, in the 
Northern states, 24, 31; in the 
Southern states, 87, 96; suggestions 
for improving, 581. See Negro 
Quarters. 

Humphrey, Seth K., on the superiority 
of the mulatto to the Negro, 386; on 
the flowering of culture, 436 

Hunt, James, on race mixture, 453 

Huntington, on the origin of the Negro, 
3; on the influence of climate on the 
Negro, 6; on race differences, 374; 
on brain-size and intelligence, 390 


Industrial Education, of the Negro, 
171-174 

Industrial Efficiency, of the Negro, 
Gyo at sclose uot Civil. “War, 1534: 
essentials of, 536; of the Negro, in- 
creased after 1896, 536; means of in- 
creasing the, 577 

Industrial Life, of the Negro, in 
Africa, 4; in the Northern states, 17; 
in the Southern states, 85-95 

Ingalls, John J., on race intermixture, 
454 

Intermarriage of whites and blacks, ex- 
tent of, 43, 484; character of the 
parties to, 43, 447; consequences of, 
449; contrast of Northern and South- 


605 

ern mulattoes in reference to, 453, 
503, 570 

Irving, Washington, the Negro in 


works of, 263 


Jamison, Roscoe C., poem by, 321 

Jefferson, Thomas, on the inferiority 
of the Negro, 382; on the coloniza- 
tion of the Negro, 458-459 

Jim Crow laws, I10 

Johnson, Charles Bertram, poem by, 
319 

Johnson, Charles S., editor, 352 

Johnson, Fenton, poetry of, 317 

Johnson, Mrs. G. D., poem by, 321 

Johnson, James Weldon, poetry of, 311 

Johnston, Sir Harry H., on the Negro 
rural South, 87, 89, 91; on the in- 
feriority of the Negro, 381; on the 
preference of Negroes for marrying 
their own kind, 421; on opportunities 
for the Negro in America, 589 

Johnston, ‘Mary, novel of, relating to 
the Negro, 301 

Jones, Charles C., writer of Negro dia- 
lect, 285 

Jones, Joshua H., poem by, 320 


Keane, on race differences, 372; on the 
inferiority of the Negro, 381; on the 
diminishing area of the Negro race, 
526 

Kennedy, R. Emmet, book of, relating 
to the Negro, 301 

Krehbiel, Henry E., on Negro folk 


songs, 335, 341, 342, 343 
Ku Klux Klan, of the present day, 129 


Labor organizations and the Negro, 19, 
20 

Lane, Winthrop D., on the Negro in 
Harlem, 27, 29 

Le Bon, Gustav, on race differences, 
a73 

Leroy-Beaulieu, on the essence of edu- 
cation, 579 

Lewis, Edmonia, sculptor, 350 

Lewis, Ethyl, poem by, 219 


606 INDEX 





Liberty, meaning of, 593 

Libraries, public, for Negroes, 174 

Lily White Party, in the South, 47, 104 

Lincoln, Abraham, on the colonization 
of the Negro, 460; on the impossibil- 
ity of equal civil rights for blacks 
and whites, 488 

Lindsay, Vachel, poem by, 
Negro, 268 

Literacy of the Negro, under slavery, 
13; in 1920, 150 

Literature, in the North as influenced 
by the Negro, 263-282; in the South 
as influenced by the Negro, 283-3060. 
See Negro Literature. 

Livingstone, W. P., on the amalgama- 
tion of whites and blacks, 455 

Locke, Alain, as author, 333 

Locke, John, on race equality, 365 

Lombroso, on the inferiority of the 
Negro, 381 

London, Jack, reference of, to the 
Negro, 268 

Louverture, Toussaint, 
leader in Haiti, 9 

Lowell, writings of, relating to the 
Negro, 264 

Lowie, R. H., on race equality, 368 

Lugard, Sir F. D., on the social sepa- 
rateness of white and colored races, 
512 

Lynching, in the South, 121-127; efforts 
to repress, 552; evil of, 583 


on the 


great Negro 


Macaulay, on the decline of poetry as 
civilization advances, 324; on racial 
intermarriage, 365 

Majette, Vara A., novel of, relating to 
the Negro, 302 

Marett, on race differences, 372 

Mark Twain, as delineator of the 
Negro, 267 

Marriage, as influenced by the sex in- 
stinct, 419; as influenced by love of 
distinction, 421 

McBlair, Robert, novel of, relating to 
the Negro, 301 

McDougall, on race differences, 378; 


on brain-size and intelligence, 390; on 
the traits of tropical people, 406; on 
race temperaments, 408; on race- 
crossing, 411; on the aptitude of 
races for colonization, 467 

McKay, Claude, poetry of, 310 

McNeill, John Charles, poems of, re- 
lating to the Negro, 299 

Means, Sterling 'M., poetry of, 314 

Mecklin, J. M., book by, on the race 

problem, 303; on race differences, 

380; on the psychology of the Negro, 

401; on the reasoning power of the 

Negro, 405; on Negro imitativeness, 

407 ; on race segregation, 474; on the 

probable extinction of the Negro, 

542; on the Negro’s feeling for the 

Mongolian, 490 

Melting Pot, danger of the, 434-440 

Mental Tests, comparing the Negro 
and mulatto, 391; comparing Negroes 
and whites, 391-393 

Merriam, George S., on the Negro 
problem, 273, 500 

Mexican Immigration, possibility of, 
supplanting the Negro, 482, 483 

Middle Class, lack of, among Negroes 
at end of Civil War, 535; as an aim 
of Booker Washington, 540; evidence 
of a Negro, 541 

Migration, Negro and white contrasted, 
247, 248, 251. See Negro ‘Migration. 

Miles, P. L., observations of, on Negro 
troops in France, 208 

Mill, John Stuart, on race equality, 365; 
on the impossibility of two races en- 
joying equal rights in the same gov- 
ernment, 491 

Miller, Kelly, writings of, 333 

Mims, Edwin, promoter of law and 
order, 125, and of interracial co- 
operation, 557 

Mitchell, P. C., on the future of amal- 
gamation, 440 

Mobs, need of suppressing, 583. See 
Lynching, Race Riots. 

Moss, Colonel, comment of, on Negro 
soldiers, 236 


— Ss 


INDEX 


Moton, R. R., as author, 333; as Negro 
leader, 504; views of, on the race 
question, 509; on the social question, 
513; attitude of, toward Southern 
whites, 504 

Mountain Region, of the South, as af- 
fecting the slavery question, 13 

Mulattoes, in the West Indies, 8; rea- 
son for increase of, in the United 
States, 97; problem of, reflected in 
prose, 275, and in poetry, 322; reason 
for the superiority of, 387; question 
of their superiority to the pure 
Negroes, 386; traits of, 408; number 
of, 450; percentage of, 450; in the 
North and South contrasted, 451, 503, 
512; at close of Civil War, 534; of 
the North and South differ on the 
social question, 570 

Murphey, E. G., books by, relating to 
the Negro, 302 


Napoleon, attempt of, to restore French 
rule in St. Domingue, 9. 

National Association for the Advance- 
ment of Colored People, program of, 
La a) 

Natural Selection, a factor of race dif- 
ferentiation, 375 

Negro, the, origin of, 3, 526; geograph- 
ical distribution of, 3; in business, 22, 
94; in the professions, 22, 578; in 
politics, 46; in public service, 23, 48; 
in domestic service, 92 

Negro Artisans, 17, 19 

Negro Characteristics, physical, 397, 
400; psychological, 401-409; influenc- 
ing the white man, 593 

Negro Children, care of, 98 

Negro Churches, in the North, 73; in 
the South, Io, 184 

Negro Colleges and Universities, 69, 
162 

Negro Common Schools, 149; cost of, 
compared to white, I51 

Negro Convicts, in the South, 143-148 

Negro Crime, in the Northern states, 
49; in the Southern states, 115; 


607 


cause of, 116; in the World War, 
232, 233 

Negro. Dance, 347 

Negro Domestic Servants, in the North- 
ern states, 17; in the Southern states, 
Q2 

Negro Domination, question of, 104 

Negro Dramatists, 349. See Dramatic 
Art. 

Negro Farmers, 86 

Negro Folk Songs, 335-344 

Negro Fraternal Orders, Io1 

Negro Free State, as a possible out- 
come of the Negro problem, 481 

Negro Funeral Songs, 341 

Negro Home Owners, in Chicago, 32; 
in the South, 86 

Negro Inventors, 22 

Negro Labor, in agriculture, 91; in the 
fishing industry, 92; in sundry indus- 
tries, 93, 94 

Negro Leadership, in New York City, 
28; examples of, 90, 328-334; in the 
North and South, contrasted, 503, 
513, 570; shift of, from preachers 
and politicians to educators and busi- 
ness men, 541; need of, in future, 543 

Negro Migration, 245-260; from coun- 
try to town, 247; to the West in 
1879, 247; during and after the 
World War, 249; extent of, 250; 
North and South, 250; interstate, 
251; causes of, 252; effects of, 258 

Negro Music, 335, 345; in the World 
War, 241; influence of, on the music 
of the whites, 346; possibilities of, 
591 

Negro Normal Schools, 162 

Negro Novelists, 325-327 

Negro Painters, 349 

Negro Periodicals, 351, 352 

Negro Poetry, cause of rancor in, 323 

Negro Population, in the United States, 
103; in the World, 547; distribution 
of the, in the South, 86, 103 

Negro Preachers, in the Northern 
states, 72-75; in the Southern states, 
181; need of better, 590 


608 


Negro Press, 351-354 

Negro Problem, nature of, 358; as 
viewed by the Negroes, 502; varies 
in each state, 592 

Negro Professional Schools, 167, 170 

Negro Proprietors, in agriculture, 86, 
89; in business, 22, 94; in manufac- 
turing, 94 

Negro Quarters, in the Northern states, 
24, 32, 36, 37; in the Southern states, 
96, 99; need of improving, 581 

Negro Radicalism, consequences of, 573, 
578 

Negro Religion. See Religious Life. 

Negro Rule, in the Southern states, 
495 

Negro Schools, elementary, 149; com- 
parative cost of, 151-153; of higher 
learning, 162-168, 169-175; general 
estimate of, 176-177 

Negro Sculptors, 350 

Negro Servants, number of, 92; char- 
acter of, 93, 94 

Negro Slavery, 6, 12 

Negro Soldiers, causing trouble in 
camps, 190-192; general estimate of, 
231-240. See Negro Troops. 

Negro Teachers, pay of, 159 

Negro Tenants, in the South, 90 

Negro Theological Schools, need of im- 
proving, 170 

Negro Troops, in the Civil War, 13; 
in the World War, 199-242 

Negro Women, as wives and mothers, 
97, 98; virtue of, 100 

Neo-Amalgamationists, 395 

Neo-Gobineaus, 395 

Newbold, N. C,, 
schools, 156 

Nordic Race, question of superiority of 
the, 395; as bearer of American cul- 
ture, 439; jealousy of the, respecting 


property rights, 494 


on Negro rural 


Oakesmith, John, on race equality, 368; 
on culture contact as the means of 


progress, 429 


INDEX 


Occupations, of the Negro, in the 
North, 17; in the South, 86 

Odum, H. W., on Negro family ties, 
99; on Negro crime, 116; on Negro 
traits, 404 

Olmsted, books of, 
Negro, 267 

Opportunities for the Negro, 588 

Osborn, Henry F., on the importante 
of race, 375; on the relation of race- 


crossing to progress, 426, 427 


relating to the 


Page, Thomas Nelson, on the Negro, 
285 

Patterson, Raymond, on the Negro 
problem, 270; on race intermixture 
in the South, 452; on education as 
the solution of the Negro problem, 
498 

Pearl, Raymond, on the probable ex- 
tinction of the Negro, 530 

Peonage, in the South, 132-136 

Pershing, General, on the operation of 
American troops in France, 193-198; 
on the service of the 92nd Division, 
230 

Peterkin, Julia, novel of, relating to the 
Negro, 301 

Pickens, William, books by, 333 

Piedmont Region, in the South, as af- 
fecting the slavery question, 12 

Politics, the Negro in, in the North, 46, 
and in the South, 103-109, 182 

Price, Charles, Negro leader, 183, 504 

Proctor, H. H., on the color line, 566 

Psychological Aspects, of amalgama- 
tion, 417 

Psychological Characteristics, of the 
Negro, 401 

Psychological Laws, applicable to race- 
crossing, 417 

Public Opinion, organization of, needed 
in the South, 583 


Quatrefages, on the diminishing area of 
the Negro race, 526 

Quillin, Frank, on race friction in Ohio, 
43; on the color line, 45 


INDEX 


609 





Race, definition of, 350 

Race Contact, problem of, 359, 560 

Race-Crossing, effects of, 410-416 

Race Culture, as influenced by race 
contact, 424 

Race Difference, the basis of the race 
problem, 396; physical, 389 

Race Equality, question of, 364; mean- 
ing of, 393 

Race Friction, in the North, 32, 43, 54, 
66-71; in the South, 110, 121; in 
training camps, 190; in the American 
army, 231 

Race Hatred, cause of, 548 

Race Prejudice, in reference to the 
housing problem, 33; various phases 
of, 33, 40, 517 

Race Progress, as influenced by race- 
crossing, 415. See Culture of Races. 

Race Riots, in the Northern states, 54; 
in the Southern states, 129-131 

Race Segregation, in the North, 39; in 
the South, 110-114; tendency 
towards, 470, 575, 577 

Racial Affinities and Antipathies, 441 

Religion of the Negro, need of elevat- 
ing the, 590. See Negro Church. 

Religious Dance, among Negroes, 347 

Religious Life, of the Negro, in Africa, 
5; in the Northern states, 28, 72-81; 
in the Southern states, 178-185 

Reuter, Edward B., on reasons for the 
superiority of the mulatto, 387; on 
the intermarriage of whites and 
blacks, 445; on the desire of the mu- 
latto to be white, 570; contrasting 
mulattoes of the North and South 
on the social question, 570 

Revolution in St. Domingue, 8 

Richards, John, observations of, on 
Negro soldiers, 200, 237 

Richey, W. R., observations of, on 
Negro soldiers, 211, 212, 237 

Right to Govern, principle determining 
the, 495 

Riis, Jacob, on the color line, 24; on 
Negro traits, 25 

Romanes, on racial differences, 372 


Roosevelt, views of, criticized by Ne- 
groes, 513, 517 

Ross, on race inequality, 380 

Rural Life, of the Negro, 87 

Ruskin, on Nature’s abhorrence of 
equality, 457 

Russell, Irwin, Negro dialect poem by, 
300 


Scarborough, Dorothy, story by, relat- 
ing to the Negro, 302 

Scott, Emmett J., service of, in the 
World War, 190; as author, 327; on 
Negro music, 241 

Scott, E. W., painter, 350 

Segregation. See Race Segregation. 

Selika, Madame, concert singer, 345 

Sense Acuteness, of Negro and Cau- 
casian, 308 

Seward, William H., on the unassimila- 
bility of the Negro, 488 

Sex Instinct, as related to interracial 
marriage, 420 

Sex Intercourse, decline of, between 
whites and blacks, 452; evil of, be- 
tween whites and blacks, 582 

Sex Morality, need of, 584 

Shaler, N. S., on the absence of friend- 
ship ties among Negroes, 99; on 
Negro rape, 118; on the inferiority 
of the Negro, 382; on the superiority 
of the mulatto to the Negro, 386; on 
Negro types, 400; on Negro traits, 
404; on the economic inefficiency of 
the Negro, 533; on the Negro prob- 
lem in the South, 586, 587 

Shands, Herbert, novel of, relating to 
the Negro, 302 

Sinclair, William A., Negro author, 333 

Slaves, treatment of, 12; distribution 
of, in North America, 12 

Slave Trade, 6 

Smith, Albert, painter, 350 

Smith, G. Elliot, on the inferiority of 
primitive races, 384 

Smith, W. B., book of, on the color 
line, 302 

Social Life, of the Negro in the North- 


610 


ern states, 36, 75; in the Southern 
states, 96, 100, 184 

Sociological Laws, applicable to race 
amalgamation, 430 

Southern Clergymen, on the race prob- 
lem, 558 

Southern Sociological Congress, on the 
race problem, 550 

Southern White Women, work of, in 
behalf of Negro uplift, 562 

Spencer, Herbert, sense acuteness in 
races, 399; on sex attraction, 419 

Spiller, G., on race equality, 367 

Standards, Social, effect of competing, 
438, 439 | 

Stanley, H. M., on the colonization of 
the Negro, 461 

Stoddard, Lothrop, on race differences, 
380 

Stone, A. H., on the rural Negro, 90; 
on Negro traits, 403, 405; on amal- 
gamation in the South, 452; on rad- 
ical Negro leadership, 318; on the 
economic inefficiency of the Negro, 


533 
Stowe, Mrs., her novel “Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin,” 267 


Survival of the Negro, question of the, 
525; lines of effort favoring, 577-593 


Taft, President, writes foreword to 
book on the Negro, 270; on educa- 
tion as the solution of the Negro 
problem, 499 

Taine, on race differences, 373 

Tannenbaum, Frank, on lynching in the 
South, 124 

Tanner, Henry O., painter, 349 

Temperament of Races, 408 

Thomas, William H., on Negro traits, 
98, 401, 404; on Negro franchise, 
107; on Negro colonization, 466; on 
Negro leadership, 521; on the future 
of the Negro, 534 

Tidewater Region, as affecting the slav- 
ery question, 12 

Toomer, Jean, novel of, on the Negro, 
326 


INDEX 


Topinard, on cross-breeding, 411 

Tozzer, on race equality, 370 

Tradition, as more important than race- 
crossing for progress, 429; ripening 
of, necessary to the flowering of cul- 
ture, 436 

Tupes, Colonel, report of, on Negro 
troops in France, 215, 217, 220, 221 

Tuskegee Institute, 173 

Tylor, on race differences, 372 


University Commission on Race Rela- 
~ tions, work of, 551 


Vogt, Carl, on the psychology of the 
Negro, 401 


Warrick, Meta, sculptor, 350 

Washington, Booker T., on opportuni- 
ties for the Negro, 19; on the race 
problem, 508, 509; on race segrega- 
tion, 474; attitude of, towards South- 
ern whites, 504; on the social ques- 
tion, 512; onslaught upon, by radical 
Negroes, 511; on the writings of, 
328-3290; on the Negro’s progress, 
535; promoter of Negro progress, 
536; on the relation of industry to 
higher culture, 538; effort of, in be- 
half of common schools, 539; as or- 
ganizer of business men, 540; views 
of, on the social question, 511; com- 
mendation of, 499 

Weale, Putnam, on the segregation of 
races of the world, 470 

Weatherford, W. D., books by, on the 
Negro, 302; on rural segregation in 
the South, 473; as leader of inter- 
racial cooperation, 550 

Webster, Daniel, on the colonization of 
the Negro, 459 

Westermarck, on the color of ruling 
classes, 363; on race-crossing, 418 

West Indian Negro, compared to the 
North American, 28 

White skin, racial value of, 362 


INDEX 


White Supremacy, in the dependencies 
of the United States and of European 
states, 495; as a solution of the race 
problem, 493-497 

White, Walter E., novel of, on the 
Negro, 326 

Whitman, poem of, relating to the 
Negro, 266 

Whittier, poems of, relating to the 
Negro, 263 

Willcox, Walter F., on the economic in- 
efficiency of the Negro, 533; on the 
race problem, 522, 587 

Williams, George W., book of, on the 
Negro, 326 

Winsborough, Mrs. W. C., leader of 
welfare work for Negroes, 563 

Wissler, Clark, on race differences, 380; 


611 


on culture rights, 425, and culture 
diffusion, 428; on the importance of 
protecting American culture, 439 

Wood, Clement, novel of, relating to 
the Negro, 302 

Woodson, Carter G., as author and edi- 
Tey UE HIRI SD 3 

Woofter, Thomas J., book by, on race 
relations, 306; promoter of interra- 
cial cooperation, 556 

World War, record of American troops 
in, 189-242 


Y. M. C. A., work of concerning race 
relations, 550, 554 


Zamenhof, on race equality, 367 


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